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THE  BASKET  WOMAN 


THE   BASKET  WOMAN 


of  fanciful  Caleg 
for  €J)itoren 


BT 

MAKY  AUSTIN 


BOSTON   AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
<$fre  fltoetftoe  ftejJjJ,  Cambrib0e 
1904 


COPYRIGHT   1904.  BY  MARY  AUSTIN 
ALL   RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October  11)04 


\ 

\9oA- 

PREFACE 

ALL  of  these  stories  are  so  nearly  true  that 
you  need  not  be  troubled  in  the  least  about 
believing  them.  They  all  occurred  in  that 
strip  of  country  which  lies  east  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  mountains  and  south  of  Yosemite. 
All  the  names  of  places  are  as  you  will  find 
them  on  the  map,  except  the  Indian  names. 
Indian  names  for  places  all  mean  something 
in  particular,  as  Pahrump,  which  is  a  Paiute 
word,  signifying  that  this  is  a  place  where  there 
is  water  enough  to  raise  corn,  and  might  be 
applied  to  any  place  answering  that  descrip- 
tion. 

The  customs  and  manners  are  all  as  they 
may  be  found  in  the  many  small  clans  of  the 
Paiutes ;  but  it  really  ought  to  be  spelled  Pah 
Utes,  for  it  means  The  Utes  Who  Live  by  the 
Water,  to  distinguish  them  from  the  Utes 
who  live  in  the  Great  Basin,  where  there  are 

273683 


vi  PREFACE 

almost  no  running  streams.  These  clans  are 
so  mixed  together  now  by  marriage  and  by 
the  breaking  down  of  old  tribal  usages  that 
it  is  not  possible  to  say  in  which  clan  the  tales 
originated,  and  they  have  become  changed 
and  confused,  very  much  as  we  know  the  old 
tales  of  Greeks  and  Romans  to  be.  The  words 
"  mahala  "  and  "  campoodie  "  are  not  Indian 
words,  but  they  are  used  by  Indians  as  well  as 
by  white  men  all  over  the  Pacific  Coast,  the 
first  to  designate  an  Indian  woman,  and  the 
second  a  village  or  collection  of  huts.  No  one 
knows  quite  how  "  mahala  "  came  to  be  used. 
It  might  be  a  word  belonging  to  some  tribe 
that  white  men  first  became  acquainted  with, 
and  it  has  been  surmised  to  be  a  mispronuncia- 
tion of  the  Spanish  mujer,  meaning  woman. 
"  Campoodie  "  is  from  the  Spanish  campo,  and 
is  often  pronounced  and  spelled  "  campody." 
A  wickiup,  as  every  one  in  the  West  knows, 
is  a  hut  of  reeds  or  brush,  very  often  pieced 
out  with  blankets  and  tin  cans. 

I  know  that  the  story  of  the  Coyote-Spirit 
is  true,  because  the  Basket  Woman  told  it  to 


PREFACE  vii 

me,  and  evidently  believed  it.  She  said  she 
had  seen  Coyote-Spirits  herself  in  Saline  Val- 
ley and  at  Fish  Lake.  In  the  same  way  she 
told  me  about  The  Fire  Bringer,  and  Kern 
River  Jim  told  me  of  Tavwots  and  how  it 
happens  that  there  are  no  trees  on  the  high 
mountains.  And  if  this  last  is  not  true,  how 
are  you  going  to  account  for  the  fact  that 
there  really  are  no  trees  there  ?  As  for  Mahala 
Joe,  he  lives  and  wears  his  woman's  dress  at 
Big  Pine,  and  if  this  account  of  how  he  came 
by  it  is  not  just  as  it  happened,  it  might  very 
well  be ;  for  he  is  not  the  first  Indian  who  has 
adopted  woman's  dress  to  escape  going  to 
war,  though  there  are  no  others  left  in  this 
district. 

I  know  that  the  story  of  the  Crooked  Fir 
is  true,  because  if  you  come  up  the  Kear- 
sarge  trail  with  me  I  can  show  you  the  very 
tree,  and  also  the  place  where  the  White  Bark 
Pine  stood ;  for  I  was  one  of  the  party  that 
took  it  on  its  travels  over  the  mountain  :  and 
the  rest  of  the  stories  are  all  as  true  as  these. 


CONTENTS 

THE  BASKET  WOMAN.  — FIRST  STOKY  ...  1 
THE  BASKET  WOMAN.  —  SECOND  STORY  .  .  .17 
THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY  .  ,  .  .  31 
THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  AND  THE  WEAVING  WOMAN  .  43 

THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER 69 

THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND 71 

THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE 87 

THE  FIRE  BRINGER      .......  107 

THE  CROOKED  FIR 119 

THE  SUGAR  PINE         .        .       ...        .        .129 

THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE 141 

THE  WHITE-BARKED  PINE 161 

NA'YANG-WIT'E,  THE  FIRST  BABBIT  DRIVE  .  .  171 
MAHALA  JOE 183 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

FIRST  STORY 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

THE  homesteader's  cabin  stood  in  a  moon- 
shaped  hollow  between  the  hills  and  the  high 
mesa ;  and  the  land  before  it  stretched  away 
golden  and  dusky  green,  and  was  lost  in  a 
blue  haze  about  where  the  river  settlements 
began.  The  hills  had  a  flowing  outline  and 
melted  softly  into  each  other  and  higher  hills 
behind,  until  the  range  broke  in  a  ragged 
crest  of  thin  peaks  white  with  snow.  A  clean, 
wide  sky  bent  over  that  country,  and  the  air 
that  moved  in  it  was  warm  and  sweet. 

The  homesteader's  son  had  run  out  on  the 
trail  that  led  toward  the  spring,  with  half  a 
mind  to  go  to  it,  but  ran  back  again  when 
he  saw  the  Basket  Woman  coming.  He  was 
afraid  of  her,  and  ashamed  because  he  was 
afraid,  so  he  did  not  tell  his  mother  that  he 
had  changed  his  mind. 

"  There  is  the  mahala  coming  for  the  wash," 


4  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

said  his  mother;  "now  you  will  have  com- 
pany at  the  spring."  But  Alan  only  held 
tighter  to  a  fold  of  her  dress.  This  was  the 
third  time  the  Indian  woman  had  come  to 
wash  for  the  homesteader's  wife ;  and,  though 
she  was  -slow  and  quiet  and  had  a  pleasant 
smile,  Alan  was  still  afraid  of  her.  All  that 
he  had  heard  of  Indians  before  coming  to  this 
country  was  very  frightful,  and  he  did  not 
understand  yet  that  it  was  not  so.  Beyond  a 
certain  point  of  hills  on  clear  days  he  could 
see  smoke  rising  from  the  campoodie,  and 
though  he  knew  nothing  but  his  dreams  of 
what  went  on  there,  he  would  not  so  much  as 
play  in  that  direction. 

The  Basket  Woman  was  the  only  Indian 
that  he  had  seen.  She  would  come  walking 
across  the  mesa  with  a  great  cone-shaped 
carrier  basket  heaped  with  brushwood  on  her 
shoulders,  stooping  under  it  and  easing  the 
weight  by  a  buckskin  band  about  her  fore- 
head. Sometimes  it  would  be  a  smaller  bas- 
ket carried  in  the  same  fashion,  and  she  would 
be  filling  it  with  bulbs  of  wild  hyacinth  or 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  5 

taboose ;  often  she  carried  a  bottle-necked  wa- 
ter basket  to  and  from  the  spring,  and  always 
wore  a  bowl-shaped  basket  on  her  head  for  a 
hat.  Her  long  hair  hung  down  from  under 
it,  and  her  black  eyes  glittered  beadily  below 
the  rim.  Alan  had  a  fancy  that  any  moment 
she  might  pick  him  up  with  a  quick  toss  as  if 
he  had  been  a  bit  of  brushwood,  and  drop  him 
over  her  shoulder  into  the  great  carrier,  and 
walk  away  across  the  mesa  with  him.  So  when 
he  saw  her  that  morning  coming  down  the 
trail  from  the  spring,  he  hung  close  by  his 
mother's  skirts. 

"  You  must  not  be  afraid  of  her,  Alan," 
said  his  mother ;  "  she  is  very  kind,  and  no 
doubt  has  had  a  boy  of  her  own." 

The  Basket  Woman  showed  them  her 
white,  even  teeth  in  a  smile.  "  This  one  very 
pretty  boy,"  she  said ;  but  Alan  had  made  up 
his  mind  not  to  trust  her.  He  was  thinking 
of  what  the  teamster  had  said  when  he  had 
driven  them  up  from  the  railroad  station 
with  their  belongings  the  day  they  came  to 
their  new  home  and  found  the  Basket  Wo- 


6  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

man  spying  curiously  in  at  the  cabin  win- 
dows. 

"  You  wanter  watch  out  how  you  behaves 
yourself,  sonny,"  said  the  teamster,  wagging 
a  solemn  jaw,  "  she  's  likely  to  pack  you  away 
in  that  basket  o'  her'n  one  of  these  days." 
And  Alan  had  watched  out  very  carefully 
indeed. 

It  was  not  a  great  while  after  they  came  to 
the  foothill  claim  that  the  homesteader  went 
over  to  the  campoodie  to  get  an  Indian  to 
help  at  fence  building,  and  Alan  went  with 
him,  holding  fast  by  his  father's  hand.  They 
found  the  Indians  living  in  low,  foul  huts; 
their  clothes  were  also  dirty,  and  they  sat 
about  on  the  ground,  fat  and  good-natured. 
The  dogs  and  children  lay  sleeping  in  the 
sun.  It  was  all  very  disappointing. 

"Will  they  not  hurt  us,  father?"  Alan 
had  said  at  starting. 

"  Oh,  no,  my  boy ;  you  must  not  get  any 
such  notion  as  that,"  said  the  homesteader ; 
"  Indians  are  not  at  all  now  what  they  were 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  7 

Alan  thought  of  this  as  he  looked  at  the 
campoodie,  and  pulled  at  his  father's  hand. 

"  I  do  not  like  Indians  the  way  they  are 
now,"  he  said ;  and  immediately  saw  that  he 
had  made  a  mistake,  for  he  was  standing 
directly  in  front  of  the  Basket  Woman's  hut, 
and  as  she  suddenly  put  her  head  out  of  the 
door  he  thought  by  the  look  of  her  mysteri- 
ous, bright  eyes  that  she  had  understood.  He 
did  not  venture  to  say  anything  more,  and  all 
the  way  home  kept  looking  back  toward  the 
campoodie  to  see  if  anything  came  of  it. 

"  Why  do  you  not  eat  your  supper  ?  "  said 
his  mother.  "  I  am  afraid  the  long  walk  in  the 
hot  sun  was  too  much  for  you."  Alan  dared 
not  say  anything  to  her  of  what  troubled  him, 
tbough  perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  if 
he  had,  for  that  night  the  Basket  Woman 
came  for  him. 

She  did  not  pick  him  up  and  toss  him  over 
her  shoulder  as  he  expected ;  but  let  down  the 
basket,  and  he  stepped  into  it  of  his  own  ac- 
cord. Alan  was  surprised  to  find  that  he  was 
not  so  much  afraid  of  her  after  all. 


8  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  What  will  you  do  with  me  ?  "  he  said. 

"  I  will  show  you  Indians  as  they  used  to 
be,"  said  she. 

Alan  could  feel  the  play  of  her  strong 
shoulders  as  they  went  out  across  the  lower 
mesa  and  began  to  climb  the  hills. 

"  Where  da  you  go  ?  "  said  the  boy. 

"To  Pahrump,  the  valley  of  Corn  Water. 
It  was  there  my  people  were  happiest  in  old 
days." 

They  went  on  between  the  oaks,  and  smelled 
the  musky  sweet  smell  of  the  wild  grapevines 
along  the  water  borders.  The  sagebrush  be- 
gan to  fail  from  the  slopes,  and  buckthorn  to 
grow  up  tall  and  thicker  j  the  wind  brought 
them  a  long  sigh  from  the  lowest  pines.  They 
came  up  with  the  silver  firs  and  passed  them, 
passed  the  drooping  spruces,  the  wet  meadows, 
and  the  wood  of  thimble-cone  pines.  The  air 
under  them  had  an  earthy  smell.  Presently 
they  came  out  upon  a  cleared  space  very  high 
up  where  the  rocks  were  sharp  and  steep. 

"Why  are  there  no  trees  here?"  asked 
Alan. 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  9 

"  I  will  tell  you  about  that,"  said  the  Bas- 
ket Woman.  "  In  the  old  flood  time,  and  that 
is  longer  ago  than  is  worth  counting,  the  water 
came  up  and  covered  the  land,  all  but  the 
high  tops  of  mountains.  Here  then  the  In- 
dians fled  and  lived,  and  with  them  the  ani- 
mals that  escaped  from  the  flood.  There 
were  trees  growing  then  over  all  the  high 
places,  but  because  the  waters  were  long  on 
the  earth  the  Indians  were  obliged  to  cut  them 
down  for  firewood.  Also  they  killed  all  the 
large  animals  for  food,  but  the  small  ones  hid 
in  the  rocks.  After  that  the  waters  went 
down ;  trees  and  grass  began  to  grow  over 
all  the  earth,  but  never  any  more  on  the  tops 
of  high  mountains.  They  had  all  been  burned 
off.  You  can  see  that  it  is  so." 

From  the  top  of  the  mountain  Alan  could 
see  all  the  hills  on  the  other  side  shouldering 
and  peering  down  toward  the  happy  valley  of 
Corn  Water. 

"Here,"  said  the  Basket  Woman,  "my 
people  came  of  old  time  in  the  growing  sea- 
son of  the  year ;  they  planted  corn,  and  the 


10  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

streams  came  down  from  the  hills  and  watered 
it.  Now  we,  too,  will  go  down." 

They  went  by  a  winding  trail,  steep  and 
stony.  The  pines  stood  up  around  and  locked 
them  closely  in. 

"  I  see  smoke  arising,"  said  Alan,  "  blue 
smoke  above  the  pines." 

"  It  is  the  smoke  of  their  hearth  fires,"  said 
the  Basket  Woman,  and  they  went  down  and 
down. 

"I  hear  a  sound  of  singing,"  said  the 
boy. 

"It  is  the  women  singing  and  grinding 
at  the  quern,"  she  said,  and  her  feet  went 


"  I  hear  laughter,"  he  said  again,  "  it  mixes 
with  the  running  of  the  water." 

"  It  is  the  maidens  washing  their  knee-long 
hair.  They  kneel  by  the  water  and  stoop 
down,  they  dip  in  the  running  water  and 
shake  out  bright  drops  in  the  sun." 

"  There  is  a  pleasant  smell,"  said  Alan. 

"  It  is  pine  nuts  roasting  in  the  cones,"  said 
the  Basket  Woman ;  "  so  it  was  of  old  time." 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  11 

They  came  out  of  the  cleft  of  the  hills  in 
a  pleasant  place  by  singing  water.  "  There 
you  will  see  the  rows  of  wickiups,"  said  the 
Basket  Woman,  "  with  the  doors  all  opening 
eastward  to  the  sun.  Let  us  sit  here  and  see 
what  we  shall  see." 

The  women  sat  by  the  wickiups  weaving 
baskets  of  willow  and  stems  of  fern.  They 
made  patterns  of  bright  feathers  and  strung 
wampum  about  the  rims.  Some  sewed  with 
sinew  and  needles  of  cactus  thorn  on  deer- 
skin white  and  fine;  others  winnowed  the 
corn.  They  stood  up  tossing  it  in  baskets  like 
grains  of  gold,  and  the  wind  carried  away  the 
chaff.  All  this  time  the  young  girls  were 
laughing  as  they  dried  their  hair  in  the  sun. 
They  bound  it  with  flowers  and  gay  strings 
of  beads,  and  made  their  cheeks  bright  with 
red  earth.  The  children  romped  and  shouted 
about  the  camp,  and  ran  bare-legged  in  the 
stream. 

"Do  they  do  nothing  but  play?"  said 
Alan. 

"  You  shall  see,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 


12  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

Away  up  the  mountain  sounded  a  faint 
halloo.  In  a  moment  all  the  camp  was  bustle 
and  delight.  The  children  clapped  their 
hands;  they  left  off  playing  and  began  to 
drag  up  brushwood  for  the  fires.  The  women 
put  away  their  weaving  and  brought  out  the 
cooking  pots ;  they  heard  the  men  returning 
from  the  hunt.  The  young  men  brought  deer 
upon  their  shoulders ;  one  had  grouse  and  one 
held  up  a  great  basket  of  trout.  The  women 
made  the  meat  ready  for  cooking.  Some  of 
them  took  meal  and  made  cakes  for  baking 
in  the  ashes.  The  men  rested  in  the  glow 
of  the  fires,  feathering  arrows  and  restring- 
ing  their  bows. 

"  That  is  well,"  said  the  Basket  Woman, 
"  to  make  ready  for  to-morrow's  meat  before 
to-day's  is  eaten." 

"  How  happy  they  are  !  "  said  the  boy. 

"They  will  be  happier  when  they  have 
eaten,"  said  she. 

After  supper  the  Indians  gathered  together 
for  singing  and  dancing.  The  old  men  told 
tales  one  after  the  other,  and  the  children 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  13 

thought  each  one  was  the  best.  Between  the 
tales  the  Indians  all  sang  together,  or  one 
sang  a  new  song  that  he  had  made.  There 
was  one  of  them  who  did  better  than  all.  He 
had  streaked  his  body  with  colored  earth  and 
had  a  band  of  eagle  feathers  in  his  hair.  In 
his  hand  was  a  rattle  of  wild  sheep's  horn  and 
small  stones ;  he  kept  time  with  it  as  he  leapt 
and  sang  in  the  light  of  the  fire.  He  sang  of 
old  wars,  sang  of  the  deer  that  was  killed, 
sang  of  the  dove  and  the  young  grass  that 
grew  on  the  mountain ;  and  the  people  were 
well  pleased,  for  when  the  heart  is  in  the 
singing  it  does  not  matter  much  what  the 
song  is  about.  The  men  beat  their  hands  to- 
gether to  keep  time  to  his  dancing,  and  the 
earth  under  his  feet  was  stamped  to  a  fine 
dust. 

"  He  is  one  that  has  found  the  wolf's  song," 
said  the  Basket  Woman. 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"  It  is  an  old  tale  of  my  people,"  said  she. 
"  Once  there  was  a  man  who  could  not  make 
any  songs,  so  he  got  no  praise  from  the  tribe, 


14  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

and  it  troubled  him  much.  Then,  as  he  was 
gathering  taboose  by  the  river,  a  wolf  went 
by,  and  the  wolf  said  to  him,  'What  will 
you  have  me  to  give  you  for  your  taboose?' 
Then  said  the  man,  '  I  will  have  you  to  give 
me  a  song.' 

"'That  will  I  gladly,'  said  the  wolf.  So 
the  wolf  taught  him,  and  that  night  he  sang 
the  wolf's  song  in  the  presence  of  all  the 
people,  and  it  made  their  hearts  to  burn 
within  them.  Then  the  man  fell  down  as  if 
he  were  dead,  for  the  pure  joy  of  singing,  and 
when  deep  sleep  was  upon  him  the  wolf  came 
in  the  night  and  stole  his  song  away.  Neither 
the  man  nor  any  one  who  had  heard  it  remem- 
bered it  any  more.  So  we  say  when  a  man 
sings  as  no  other  sang  before  him,  'He  has 
the  wolf's  song.'  It  is  a  good  saying.  Now  we 
must  go,  for  the  children  are  all  asleep  by 
their  mothers,  and  the  day  comes  soon,"  said 
the  Basket  Woman. 

"  Shall  we  come  again  ?  "  said  Alan.  "And 
will  it  all  be  as  it  is  now  ?  " 

"My  people  come  often  to  the  valley  of 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  15 

Corn  Water,"  said  she,  "  but  it  is  never  as  it 
is  now  except  in  dreams.  Now  we  must  go 
quickly."  Far  up  the  trail  they  saw  a  gray- 
ness  in  the  eastern  sky  where  the  day  was 
about  to  come  in. 

"Hark,"  said  the  Basket  Woman,  "they 
will  sing  together  the  coyote  song.  It  is  so 
that  they  sing  it  when  the  coyote  goes  home 
from  his  hunting,  and  the  morning  is  near. 

"  The  coyote  cries  .  .  . 
He  cries  at  daybreak  .  .  . 
He  cries  .  .  . 
The  coyote  cries  "... 

sang  the  Basket  Woman,  but  all  the  spaces 
in  between  the  words  were  filled  with  long 
howls, —  weird,  wicked  noises  that  seemed  to 
hunt  and  double  in  a  half-human  throat.  It 
made  the  hair  on  Alan's  neck  stand  up,  and 
cold  shivers  creep  along  his  back.  He  began 
to  shake,  for  the  wild  howls  drew  near  and 
louder,  and  he  felt  the  bed  under  him  tremble 
with  his  trembling. 

"Mother,  mother,"  he  cried,  "what  is 
that?" 


16  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  It  is  only  the  coyotes,"  said  she ;  "  they 
always  howl  about  this  time  of  night.  It  is 
nothing;  go  to  sleep  again." 

"  But  I  am  afraid." 

"  They  cannot  hurt  you,"  said  his  mother ; 
"  it  is  only  the  little  gray  heasts  that  you  see 
trotting  about  the  mesa  of  afternoons ;  hear 
them  now." 

"  I  am  afraid,"  said  Alan. 

"Then  you  must  come  in  my  bed,"  said 
she ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  he  was  fast  asleep 
again. 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN 
SECOND  STORY 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

THE  next  time  Alan  saw  the  Basket  Woman 
he  was  not  nearly  so  much  afraid  of  her, 
though  he  did  not  venture  to  speak  of  their 
journey  to  Pahrump.  He  said  to  his  mother, 
"Do  you  not  wish  the  Indians  could  have 
stayed  the  way  they  were  ?  "  and  his  mother 
laughed. 

"Why,  no,  child,"  she  said,  "I  do  not 
think  that  I  do.  I  think  they  are  much  better 
off  as  they  are  now."  Alan,  however,  was  not 
to  be  convinced.  The  next  time  he  saw  the 
Basket  Woman  he  was  even  troubled  about 
it. 

The  homesteader  had  taken  his  family  to 
the  town  for  a  day,  and  the  first  thing  Alan 
saw  when  he  got  down  from  the  wagon  was 
the  Basket  Woman.  She  was  sitting  in  a  cor- 
ner of  the  sidewalk  with  a  group  of  other 
mahalas,  with  her  blanket  drawn  over  her 


20  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

shoulders,  looking  out  upon  the  town,  and 
her  eyes  were  dull  and  strange. 

A  stream  of  people  went  by  them  in  the 
street,  and  minded  them  no  more  than  the 
dogs  they  stepped  over,  sprawling  at  the  doors 
of  the  stores.  Some  of  the  Indian  women  had 
children  with  them,  but  they  neither  shouted 
nor  ran  as  they  had  done  in  the  camp  of  Corn 
Water ;  they  sat  quietly  by  their  mothers,  and 
Alan  noticed  how  worn  and  poor  were  the 
clothes  of  all  of  them,  and  how  wishful  all  the 
eyes.  He  could  not  get  his  mind  off  them  be- 
cause he  could  not  get  them  out  of  his  sight 
for  very  long  at  a  time.  It  was  a  very  small 
town,  and  as  he  went  with  his  mother  in  and 
about  the  stores  he  would  be  coming  face  to 
face  with  the  mahalas  every  little  while,  and 
the  Basket  Woman's  eyes  were  always  sad. 

His  mother,  when  she  had  finished  her 
shopping,  gave  him  a  silver  dime  and  told 
him  that  he  might  spend  it  as  he  wished.  As 
soon  as  Alan  had  turned  the  corner  on  that 
errand  there  was  the  Basket  Woman  with  her 
chin  upon  her  knees  and  her  blanket  drawn 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  21 

over  her  shoulders.  Alan  stopped  a  moment 
in  front  of  her ;  he  would  have  liked  to  say 
something  comforting,  but  found  himself  still 
afraid. 

Her  eyes  looked  on  beyond  him,  blurred 
and  dim ;  he  supposed  she  must  be  thinking 
of  the  happy  valley,  and  grew  so  very  sorry 
for  her  that,  as  he  could  not  get  the  courage 
to  speak,  he  threw  his  dime  into  her  lap  and 
ran  as  fast  as  he  could  away.  It  seemed  to 
him  as  he  ran  that  she  called  to  him,  but  he 
could  not  be  sure. 

That  night,  almost  as  soon  as  he  had  touched 
the  pillow,  she  came  and  stood  beside  him  with- 
out motion  or  sound,  and  let  down  the  basket 
from  her  back. 

"Do  we  go  to  Corn  Water?"  asked  Alan 
as  he  stepped  into  it. 

"  To  my  people  of  old  time,"  said  the  Bas- 
ket Woman,  "so  that  you  need  not  be  so 
much  sorry." 

Then  they  went  out  by  the  mesa  trail,  where 
the  sage  showed  duskily  under  a  thin  rim  of 
moon.  It  seemed  to  Alan  that  they  went 


22  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

slowly,  almost  heavily.  When  they  came  to 
the  parting  of  the  ways,  she  let  down  the  bas- 
ket to  rest.  A  rabbit  popped,  startled,  out  of 
the  brush,  and  scurried  into  the  dark ;  its  white 
tail,  like  a  signal,  showed  the  way  it  went. 

"  What  was  that  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"  Only  little  Tavwots,  whom  we  scared  out 
of  his  nest.  Lean  forward,"  she  said,  "and 
I  will  tell  you  a  tale  about  him."  So  the  boy 
leaned  his  head  against  the  Basket  Woman's 
long  black  hair,  and  heard  the  story  of  Little 
Tavwots  and  How  He  Caught  the  Sun  in  a 
Snare. 

"  It  was  long  ago,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 
"  Tavwots  was  the  largest  of  all  four-footed 
things,  and  a  mighty  hunter.  He  would  get 
up  as  soon  as  it  was  day  and  go  to  his  hunt- 
ing, but  always  before  him  was  the  track  of  a 
great  foot  on  the  trail ;  and  this  troubled  him, 
for  his  pride  was  as  big  as  his  body  and 
greater  than  his  fame. 

" « Who  is  this  ? '  cried  Tavwots, '  that  goes 
with  so  great  a  stride  before  me  to  the  hunt- 
ing ?  Does  he  think  to  put  me  to  shame  ? ' 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  23 

" ( T'-sst ! '  said  his  mother,  '  there  is  none 
greater  than  thee.' 

" '  Nevertheless,'  said  Tavwots, '  there  are  the 
footprints  in  the  trail.'  The  next  morning  he 
got  up  earlier,  but  there  were  always  the  great 
footprints  and  the  long  stride  before  him. 

" l  Now  I  will  set  me  a  trap  for  this  impu- 
dent fellow,'  said  Tavwots,  for  he  was  very 
cunning.  So  he  made  a  snare  of  his  bow- 
string and  set  it  in  the  trail  overnight,  and 
in  the  morning  when  he  went  to  look,  behold, 
he  had  caught  the  sun  in  his  snare.  All  that 
quarter  of  the  earth  was  beginning  to  smoke 
with  the  heat  of  it. 

"  '  Is  it  you  ? '  cried  Tavwots,  '  who  made 
the  tracks  in  my  trail  ? ' 

u '  It  is  I,'  said  the  sun.  '  Come  now  and  set 
me  free  before  the  whole  earth  is  afire.'  Then 
Tavwots  saw  what  he  had  to  do,  so  he  drew 
his  knife  and  ran  to  cut  the  bowstring.  But 
the  heat  was  so  great  that  he  ran  back  before 
he  had  done  it,  and  was  melted  down  to  one 
half  his  size.  Then  the  smoke  of  the  burning 
earth  began  to  curl  up  against  the  sky. 


24  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

" t  Come  again,  Tavwots,'  cried  the  sun.  So 
he  ran  again  and  ran  back,  and  the  third  time 
he  ran  he  cut  the  bowstring,  and  the  sun  was 
set  free  from  the  snare.  But  by  that  time 
Tavwots  was  melted  down  to  as  small  as  he  is 
now,  and  so  he  remains.  Still  you  may  see  by 
the  print  of  his  feet  as  he  leaps  in  the  trail 
how  great  his  stride  was  when  he  caught  the 
sun  in  his  snare. 

"  So  it  is  always,"  said  the  Basket  Woman, 
"  that  which  is  large  grows  less,  and  my  people, 
which  were  great,  have  dwindled  away." 

After  that  she  became  quiet,  and  they  went 
on  over  the  mountain.  Because  he  was  begin- 
ning to  be  acquainted  with  it,  the  way  seemed 
shorter  to  Alan  than  before.  They  passed  over 
the  high  barren  ridges,  and  he  began  to  look 
for  the  camp  at  Corn  Water. 

"I  see  no  smoke,"  said  Alan. 

"  It  would  bring  down  their  enemies  like 
buzzards  on  carrion,"  said  the  Basket  Wo- 
man. 

"  There  is  no  sound  of  singing  nor  of  laugh- 
ter," said  the  boy. 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  25 

"  Who  laughs  in  the  time  of  war?"  said  she. 

"  Is  there  war  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"  Long  and  bitter,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 
"  Let  us  go  softly  and  come  upon  them  un- 
awares." 

So  they  went,  light  of  foot,  among  the  pines 
until  they  saw  the  wickiups  opening  eastward 
to  the  sun,  but  many  of  them  stood  ruined 
and  awry.  There  were  only  the  very  old  and 
the  children  in  the  camp,  and  these  did  not 
run  and  play.  They  stole  about  like  mice  in 
the  meadow  sod,  and  if  so  much  as  a  twig 
snapped  in  the  forest,  they  huddled  motion- 
less as  young  quail.  The  women  worked  in 
the  growing  corn ;  they  dug  roots  on  the  hill 
slope  and  caught  grasshoppers  for  food.  One 
made  a  noose  of  her  long  black  hair  plucked 
out,  and  snared  the  bright  lizards  that  ran 
among  the  rocks.  It  seemed  to  Alan  that  the 
Indians  looked  wishful  and  thinner  than  they 
should ;  but  such  food  as  they  found  was  all 
put  by. 

"  Why  do  they  do  this? "  asked  the  boy. 

"  That  the  men  who  go  to  war  may  not  go 


26  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

fasting,"  said  the  Basket  Woman.  "Look, 
now  we  shall  have  news  of  them." 

A  young  man  came  noiselessly  out  of  the 
wood,  and  it  was  he  who  had  sung  the  new 
song  on  the  night  of  feasting  and  dancing. 
He  had  eagle  feathers  in  his  hair,  but  they 
were  draggled;  there  was  beadwork  on  his 
leggings,  but  it  was  torn  with  thorns ;  there 
was  paint  on  his  face  and  his  body,  but  it  was 
smeared  over  red,  and  as  he  came  into  the 
camp  he  broke  his  bow  across  his  knee. 

"  It  is  a  token  of  defeat,"  said  the  Basket 
Woman ;  "  the  others  will  come  soon."  But 
some  came  feebly  because  of  wounds,  and  it 
seemed  the  women  looked  for  some  who  might 
never  come.  They  cast  up  their  arms  and 
cried  with  a  terrible  wailing  sound  that  rose 
and  shuddered  among  the  pines. 

"Be  still,"  said  the  young  man;  "would 
you  bring  our  enemies  down  upon  us  with 
your  screeching?"  Then  the  women  threw 
themselves  quietly  in  the  dust,  and  rocked  to 
and  fro  with  sobbing ;  their  stillness  was  more 
bitter  than  their  crying. 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  27 

Suddenly  out  of  the  wood  came  a  storm  of 
arrows,  a  rush  of  strange,  painted  braves,  and 
the  din  of  fighting. 

"  Shut  your  eyes,"  said  the  Basket  Woman, 
"  it  is  not  good  for  you  to  see."  Alan  hid  his 
face  in  the  Basket  Woman's  dress,  and  heard 
the  noise  of  fighting  rage  and  die  away.  When 
he  ventured  to  look  again  on  the  ruined  huts 
and  the  trampled  harvest,  there  were  few 
left  in  the  camp  of  Corn  Water,  and  they 
had  enough  to  do  to  find  food  for  their  poor 
bodies.  They  winnowed  the  creek  with  basket- 
work  weirs  for  every  finger-long  troutling  that 
came  down  in  it,  and  tore  the  bark  off  the 
pine  trees  to  get  at  the  grubs  underneath. 

"  Why  do  they  not  go  out  and  kill  deer  as 
before  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"  Their  enemies  lurk  in  the  wood  and  drive 
away  the  game,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 

"  Why  do  they  not  go  to  another  place  ?  " 

"  Where  shall  they  go,  when  their  foes  watch 
every  pass  ?  "  said  she. 

It  seemed  to  Alan  that  many  days  and 
nights  passed  while  they  watched  by  the 


28  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

camp ;  and  the  days  were  all  sorrowful,  and 
always,  as  before,  the  best  meat  was  set  aside 
for  the  strongest. 

"  Why  is  this  so  ?  "  asked  the  boy. 

"  Because,"  said  the  Basket  Woman, "  those 
who  are  strong  must  stay  so  to  care  for  the 
rest.  It  is  the  way  of  my  people.  You  see  that 
the  others  do  not  complain."  And  it  was  so 
that  the  feeble  ones  tottered  silently  about 
the  camp  or  sat  still  a  long  time  in  one  place 
with  their  heads  upon  their  knees. 

"  How  will  it  end  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"They  must  go  away  at  last,"  said  she, 
"  though  the  cords  of  their  hearts  are  fastened 
here.  But  there  is  no  seed  corn,  and  the  winter 
is  close  at  hand." 

Then  there  began  to  be  a  tang  of  frost 
in  the  air,  and  the  people  gathered  up  their 
household  goods,  and,  though  there  was  not 
much  of  them,  they  staggered  and  bent  under 
the  burden  as  they  went  up  out  of  the  once 
happy  valley  to  another  home.  The  women 
let  down  their  long  hair  and  smeared  ashes 
upon  it ;  they  threw  up  their  lean  arms  and 


THE  BASKET  WOMAN  29 

wailed  long  and  mournfully  as  they  passed 
among  the  pines.  Alan  began  to  tremble  with 
crying,  and  felt  the  Basket  Woman  patting 
him  on  the  shoulder.  Her  voice  sounded  to 
him  like  the  voice  of  his  mother  telling  him 
to  go  to  sleep  again,  for  there  was  nothing 
for  him  to  be  troubled  about.  After  he  grew 
quieter,  the  Indian  woman  lifted  him  up. 
"  We  must  be  going,"  she  said,  "  it  is  not 
good  for  us  to  be  here." 

Alan  wished  as  they  went  up  over  the 
mountain  that  she  would  help  him  with  talk 
toward  forgetting  what  he  had  seen,  but  the 
long  hair  fell  over  her  face  and  she  would  not 
talk.  He  shivered  in  the  basket,  and  the  night 
felt  colder  and  full  of  fearsome  noises. 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  he  whispered,  as  a  falling 
star  trailed  all  across  the  dark. 

"  It  is  the  coyote  people  that  brought  the 
fire  to  my  people,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 
Alan  hoped  she  would  tell  him  a  tale  about  it, 
but  she  would  not.  They  went  on  down  the 
mountain  until  they  came  to  the  borders  of 
the  long-leaved  pines.  Alan  heard  the  sough 


30  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

of  the  wind  in  the  needles,  and  it  seemed  as 
if  it  called. 

«  What  is  that?  "  he  whispered. 

"  It  is  Hi-no-no,  the  wind,  mourning  for  his 
brother,  the  pine  tree,"  but  she  would  not  tell 
him  that  tale,  either.  She  went  faster  and 
faster,  and  Alan  felt  the  stir  of  her  shoulders 
under  him.  He  listened  to  the  wind,  and  it 
grew  fierce  and  louder  until  he  heard  the 
house  beams  creak,  for  he  was  awake  in  his 
own  bed.  A  strong  wind  drove  gustily  across 
the  mesa  and  laid  hold  of  the  corners  of  the 
roof. 

The  next  morning  the  homesteader  said 
that  he  must  go  to  the  campoodie  and  Alan 
might  go  with  him.  Alan  was  quite  pleased, 
and  said  to  his  mother  while  she  was  getting 
him  ready,  "  Do  you  know,  I  think  Indians 
are  a  great  deal  better  off  as  they  are  now." 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  his  mother,  smiling,  "  I 
think  so,  too." 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY 

IN  a  short  and  shallow  canon  on  the  front  of 
Oppapago  running  eastward  toward  the  sun, 
one  may  find  a  clear  brown  stream  called  the 
creek  of  Pinon  Pines.  That  is  not  because  it 
is  unusual  to  find  pinon  trees  on  Oppapago, 
but  because  there  are  so  few  of  them  in  the 
canon  of  the  stream.  There  are  all  sorts  higher 
up  on  the  slopes,  —  long-leaved  yellow  pines, 
thimble  cones,  tamarack,  silver  fir  and  Douglas 
spruce ;  but  here  there  is  only  a  group  of  the 
low-heading,  gray  nut  pines  which  the  earli- 
est inhabitants  of  that  country  called  pinons. 
The  canon  of  Pinon  Pines  has  a  pleasant 
outlook  and  lies  open  to  the  sun,  but  there  is 
not  much  other  cause  for  the  forest  rangers 
to  remember  it.  At  the  upper  end  there  is 
no  more  room  by  the  stream  border  than 
will  serve  for  a  cattle  trail ;  willows  grow  in 
it,  choking  the  path  of  the  water ;  there  are 


34  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

brown  birches  here  and  ropes  of  white  clem- 
atis tangled  over  thickets  of  brier  rose.  Low 
down  the  ravine  broadens  out  to  inclose  a 
meadow  the  width  of  a  lark's  flight,  blossomy 
and  wet  and  good.  Here  the  stream  ran  once 
in  a  maze  of  soddy  banks  and  watered  all  the 
ground,  and  afterward  ran  out  at  the  canon's 
mouth  across  the  mesa  in  a  wash  of  bone-white 
boulders  as  far  as  it  could.  That  was  not 
very  far,  for  it  was  a  slender  stream.  It  had 
its  source  really  on  the  high  crests  and  hollows 
of  Oppapago,  in  the  snow  banks  that  melted 
and  seeped  downward  through  the  rocks  ;  but 
the  stream  did  not  know  any  more  of  that  than 
you  know  of  what  happened  to  you  before 
you  were  born,  and  could  give  no  account  of 
itself  except  that  it  crept  out  from  under  a 
great  heap  of  rubble  far  up  in  the  canon  of 
the  Pinon  Pines.  And  because  it  had  no  pools 
in  it  deep  enough  for  trout,  and  no  trees  on 
its  borders  but  gray  nut  pines ;  because,  try  as 
it  might,  it  could  never  get  across  the  mesa 
to  the  town,  the  stream  had  fully  made  up  its 
mind  to  run  away. 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY         35 

"  Pray  what  good  will  that  do  you  ?  "  said 
the  pines.  "  If  you  get  to  the  town,  they  will 
turn  you  into  an  irrigating  ditch  and  set  you 
to  watering  crops." 

"  As  to  that/'  said  the  stream,  "  if  I  once 
get  started  I  will  not  stop  at  the  town." 
Then  it  would  fret  between  its  banks  until  the 
spangled  frills  of  the  mimulus  were  all  tat- 
tered with  its  spray.  Often  at  the  end  of  the 
summer  it  was  worn  quite  thin  and  small  with 
running,  and  not  able  to  do  more  than  reach 
the  meadow. 

"  But  some  day,"  it  whispered  to  the  stones, 
"  I  shall  run  quite  away." 

If  the  stream  had  been  inclined  for  it,  there 
was  no  lack  of  good  company  on  its  own 
borders.  Birds  nested  in  the  willows,  rabbits 
came  to  drink;  one  summer  a  bobcat  made 
its  lair  up  the  bank  opposite  the  brown  birches, 
and  often  deer  fed  in  the  meadow.  Then 
there  was  a  promise  of  better  things.  In  the 
spring  of  one  year  two  old  men  came  up  into 
the  canon  of  Pinon  Pines.  They  had  been 
miners  and  partners  together  for  many  years, 


36  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

they  had  grown  rich  and  grown  poor,  and  had 
seen  many  hard  places  and  strange  times.  It 
was  a  day  when  the  creek  ran  clear  and  the 
south  wind  smelled  of  the  earth.  Wild  bees 
began  to  whine  among  the  willows,  and  the 
meadow  bloomed  over  with  poppy-breasted 
larks.  Then  said  one  of  the  old  men,  "  Here 
is  good  meadow  and  water  enough;  let  us 
build  a  house  and  grow  trees.  We  are  too 
old  to  dig  in  the  mines." 

"  Let  us  set  about  it,"  said  the  other ;  for 
that  is  the  way  with  two  who  have  been  a  long 
time  together:  what  one  thinks  of,  the  other  is 
for  doing.  So  they  brought  their  possessions 
and  made  a  beginning  that  day,  for  they  felt 
the  spring  come  on  warmly  in  their  blood ; 
they  wished  to  dig  in  the  earth  and  handle 
it. 

These  two  men  who,  in  the  mining  camps 
where  they  were  known,  were  called  "  Shorty  " 
and  "  Long  Tom,"  and  had  almost  forgotten 
that  they  had  other  names,  built  a  house  by 
the  water  border  and  planted  trees.  Shorty 
was  all  for  an  orchard,  but  Long  Tom  pre- 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY         37 

ferred  vegetables.  So  they  did  each  what  he 
liked,  and  were  never  so  happy  as  when  walk- 
ing in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  touch- 
ing the  growing  things  as  they  walked  and 
praising  each  other's  work. 

"  This  will  make  a  good  home  for  our  old 
age,"  said  Long  Tom,  "  and  when  we  die  we 
can  be  buried  here." 

"  Under  the  pinon  pines,"  said  Shorty.  "  I 
have  marked  out  a  place." 

So  they  were  very  happy  for  three  years.  By 
this  time  the  stream  had  become  so  interested 
it  had  almost  forgotten  about  running  away. 
But  every  year  it  noted  that  a  larger  bit  of 
the  meadow  was  turned  under  and  planted, 
and  more  and  more  the  men  made  dams  and 
ditches  to  govern  its  running, 

"  In  fact,"  said  the  stream,  "  I  am  being 
made  into  an  irrigating  ditch  before  I  have 
had  my  fling  in  the  world.  I  really  must  make 
a  start." 

That  very  winter  by  the  help  of  a  great 
storm  it  went  roaring  down  the  meadow  over 
the  mesa,  and  so  clean  away,  with  only  a  track 

273683 


38  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

of  muddy  sand  to  show  the  way  it  had  gone. 
All  the  winter,  however,  Shorty  and  Long 
Tom  brought  water  for  drinking  from  a  spring, 
and  looked  for  the  stream  to  come  hack.  In 
the  spring  they  hoped  still,  for  that  was  the 
season  they  looked  for  the  orchard  to  bear. 
But  no  fruit  set  on  the  trees,  and  the  seeds 
Long  Tom  planted  shriveled  in  the  earth.  So 
by  the  end  of  summer,  when  they  understood 
that  the  water  would  not  come  back  at  all, 
they  went  sadly  away. 

Now  what  happened  to  the  creek  of  Pirion 
Pines  is  not  very  well  known  to  any  one,  for 
the  stream  is  not  very  clear  on  that  point,  ex- 
cept that  it  did  not  have  a  happy  time.  It 
went  out  in  the  world  on  the  wings  of  the 
storm  and  was  very  much  tossed  about  and 
mixed  up  with  other  waters,  lost  and  bewil- 
dered. Everywhere  it  saw  water  at  work, 
turning  mills,  watering  fields,  carrying  trade, 
falling  as  hail,  rain,  and  snow,  and  at  the  last, 
after  many  journeys,  found  itself  creeping  out 
from  under  the  rocks  of  Oppapago  in  the 
canon  of  Pinon  Pines.  Immediately  the  little 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY         39 

stream  knew  itself  and  recalled  clearly  all  that 
had  happened  to  it  before. 

"  After  all,  home  is  best,"  said  the  stream, 
and  ran  about  in  its  choked  channels  look- 
ing for  old  friends.  The  willows  were  there, 
but  grown  shabby  and  dying  at  the  top; 
the  birches  were  quite  dead,  but  stood  still 
in  their  places;  and  there  was  only  rubbish 
where  the  white  clematis  had  been.  Even  the 
rabbits  had  gone  away.  The  little  stream 
ran  whimpering  in  the  meadow,  fumbling  at 
the  ruined  ditches  to  comfort  the  fruit-trees 
which  were  not  quite  dead.  It  was  very  dull 
in  those  days  living  in  the  canon  of  Pinon 
Pines. 

"  But  it  is  really  my  own  fault,"  said  the 
stream.  So  it  went  on  repairing  the  borders 
with  the  best  heart  it  could  contrive. 

About  the  time  the  white  clematis  had  come 
back  to  hide  the  ruin  of  the  brown  birches,  a 
young  man  came  and  camped  with  his  wife 
and  child  in  the  meadow.  They  were  looking 
for  a  place  to  make  a  home.  They  looked  long 
at  the  meadow,  for  Shorty  and  Long  Tom  had 


40  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

taken  away  their  house  and  it  did  not  appear 
to  belong  to  any  one. 

"  What  a  charming  place  !  "  said  the  young 
wife,  "  just  the  right  distance  from  town,  and 
a  stream  all  to  ourselves.  And  look,  there  are 
fruit-trees  already  planted.  Do  let  us  decide 
to  stay." 

Then  she  took  off  the  child's  shoes  and 
stockings  to  let  it  play  in  the  stream.  The 
water  curled  all  about  the  bare  feet  and  gur- 
gled delightedly. 

"  Ah,  do  stay,"  begged  the  happy  water, 
"I  can  be  such  a  help  to  you,  for  I  know 
how  a  garden  should  be  irrigated  in  the  best 
manner." 

The  child  laughed  and  stamped  the  water 
up  to  his  bare  knees.  The  young  wife  watched 
anxiously  while  her  husband  walked  up  and 
down  the  stream  border  and  examined  the 
fruit-trees. 

"It  is  a  delightful  place,"  he  said,  "and 
the  soil  is  rich,  but  I  am  afraid  the  water 
cannot  be  depended  upon.  There  are  signs  of 
a  great  drought  within  the  last  two  or  three 


THE  STREAM  THAT  RAN  AWAY         41 

years.  Look,  there  is  a  clump  of  birches  in  the 
very  path  of  the  stream,  but  all  dead;  and 
the  largest  limbs  of  the  fruit-trees  have  died. 
In  this  country  one  must  be  able  to  make  sure 
of  the  water  supply.  I  suppose  the  people  who 
planted  them  must  have  abandoned  the  place 
when  the  stream  went  dry.  We  must  go  on 
farther."  So  they  took  their  goods  and  the 
child  and  went  on  farther. 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  the  stream,  "  that  is  what 
is  to  be  expected  when  one  has  a  reputation 
for  neglecting  one's  duty.  But  I  wish  they 
had  stayed.  That  baby  and  I  understood  each 
other." 

He  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  not  to  run 
away  again,  though  he  could  not  be  expected 
to  be  quite  cheerful  after  all  that  had  hap- 
pened ;  in  fact,  if  you  go  yourself  to  the 
canon  of  the  Pinon  Pines  you  will  notice 
that  the  stream,  where  it  goes  brokenly  about 
the  meadow,  has  quite  a  mournful  sound. 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  AND  THE 
WEAVING  WOMAN 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  AND  THE  WEAV- 
ING WOMAN 

THE  Weaving  Woman  lived  under  the  bank 
of  the  stony  wash  that  cut  through  the  coun- 
try of  the  mesquite  dunes.  The  Coyote-Spirit, 
which,  you  understand,  is  an  Indian  whose 
form  has  been  changed  to  fit  with  his  evil  be- 
havior, ranged  from  the  Black  Rock  where 
the  wash  began  to  the  white  sands  beyond 
Pahranagat ;  and  the  Goat-Girl  kept  her  flock 
among  the  mesquites,  or  along  the  windy 
stretch  of  sage  below  the  campoodie ;  but  as 
the  Coyote-Spirit  never  came  near  the  wicki- 
ups by  day,  and  the  Goat-Girl  went  home  the 
moment  the  sun  dropped  behind  Pahranagat, 
they  never  met.  These  three  are  all  that  have 
to  do  with  the  story. 

The  Weaving  Woman,  whose  work  was  the 
making  of  fine  baskets  of  split  willow  and 
roots  of  yucca  and  brown  grass,  lived  alone, 


46  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

because  there  was  nobody  found  who  wished 
to  live  with  her,  and  because  it  was  whispered 
among  the  wickiups  that  she  was  different 
from  other  people.  It  was  reported  that  she 
had  an  infirmity  of  the  eyes  which  caused  her 
to  see  everything  with  rainbow  fringes,  big- 
ger and  brighter  and  better  than  it  was.  All 
her  days  were  fruitful,  a  handful  of  pine  nuts 
as  much  to  make  merry  over  as  a  feast ;  every 
lad  who  went  by  a-hunting  with  his  bow  at 
his  back  looked  to  be  a  painted  brave,  and 
every  old  woman  digging  roots  as  fine  as  a 
medicine  man  in  all  his  feathers.  All  the 
faces  at  the  campoodie,  dark  as  the  mingled 
sand  and  lava  of  the  Black  Rock  country, 
deep  lined  with  work  and  weather,  shone  for 
this  singular  old  woman  with  the  glory  of  the 
late  evening  light  on  Pahranagat.  The  door 
of  her  wickiup  opened  toward  the  campoodie 
with  the  smoke  going  up  from  cheerful 
hearths,  and  from  the  shadow  of  the  bank 
where  she  sat  to  make  baskets  she  looked 
down  the  stony  wash  where  all  the  trails  con- 
verged that  led  every  way  among  the  dunes, 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  47 

and  saw  an  enchanted  mesa  covered  with 
misty  bloom  and  gentle  creatures  moving  on 
trails  that  seemed  to  lead  to  the  places  where 
one  had  always  wished  to  be. 

Since  all  this  was  so,  it  was  not  surprising 
that  her  baskets  turned  out  to  be  such  wonder- 
ful affairs,  and  the  tribesmen,  though  they 
winked  and  wagged  their  heads,  were  very 
glad  to  buy  them  for  a  haunch  of  venison 
or  a  bagful  of  mesquite  meal.  Sometimes,  as 
they  stroked  the  perfect  curves  of  the  bowls 
or  traced  out  the  patterns,  they  were  heard  to 
sigh,  thinking  how  fine  life  would  be  if  it 
were  so  rich  and  bright  as  she  made  it  seem, 
instead  of  the  dull  occasion  they  had  found 
it.  There  were  some  who  even  said  it  was  a 
pity,  since  she  was  so  clever  at  the  craft,  that 
the  weaver  was  not  more  like  other  people, 
and  no  one  thought  to  suggest  that  in  that 
case  her  weaving  would  be  no  better  than 
theirs.  For  all  this  the  basket-maker  did  not 
care,  sitting  always  happily  at  her  weaving  or 
wandering  far  into  the  desert  in  search  of 
withes  and  barks  and  dyes,  where  the  wild 


48  THE  BASKET    WOMAN 

things  showed  her  many  a  wonder  hid  from 
those  who  have  not  rainbow  fringes  to  their 
eyes ;  and  because  she  was  not  afraid  of  any- 
thing, she  went  farther  and  farther  into  the 
silent  places  until  in  the  course  of  time  she 
met  the  Coyote-Spirit. 

Now  a  Coyote-Spirit,  from  having  been  a 
man,  is  continually  thinking  about  men  and 
wishing  to  be  with  them,  and,  being  a  coyote 
and  of  the  wolf's  breed,  no  sooner  does  he 
have  his  wish  than  he  thinks  of  devouring. 
So  as  soon  as  this  one  had  met  the  Weaving 
Woman  he  desired  to  eat  her  up,  or  to  work 
her  some  evil  according  to  the  evil  of  his  na- 
ture. He  did  not  see  any  opportunity  to  be- 
gin at  the  first  meeting,  for  on  account  of  the 
infirmity  of  her  eyes  the  woman  did  not  see 
him  as  a  coyote,  but  as  a  man,  and  let  down 
her  wicker  water  bottle  for  him  to  drink,  so 
kindly  that  he  was  quite  abashed.  She  did 
not  seem  in  the  least  afraid  of  him,  which  is 
disconcerting  even  to  a  real  coyote ;  though 
if  he  had  been,  she  need  not  have  been  afraid 
of  him  in  any  case.  Whatever  pestiferous 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  49 

beast  the  Indian  may  think  the  dog  of  the 
wilderness,  he  has  no  reason  to  fear  him  ex- 
cept when  by  certain  signs,  as  having  a  larger 
and  leaner  body,  a  sharper  muzzle,  and  more 
evilly  pointed  ears,  he  knows  him  the  soul  of 
a  bad-hearted  man  going  about  in  that  guise. 
There  are  enough  of  these  coyote-spirits  rang- 
ing in  Mesquite  Valley  and  over  towards  Fune- 
ral Mountains  and  about  Pahranagat  to  give 
certain  learned  folk  surmise  as  to  whether 
there  may  not  be  a  strange  breed  of  wolves  in 
that  region ;  but  the  Indians  know  better. 

When  the  coyote-spirit  who  had  met  the 
basket  woman  thought  about  it  afterward,  he 
said  to  himself  that  she  deserved  all  the  mis- 
chance that  might  come  upon  her  for  that 
meeting.  "  She  knows,"  he  said,  "  that  this 
is  my  range,  and  whoever  walks  in  a  coyote- 
spirit's  range  must  expect  to  take  the  conse- 
quences. She  is  not  at  all  like  the  Goat-Girl." 

The  Coyote-Spirit  had  often  watched  the 
Goat-Girl  from  the  top  of  Pahranagat,  but 
because  she  was  always  in  the  open  where  no 
lurking-places  were,  and  never  far  from  the 


50  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

corn  lands  where  the  old  men  might  be  work- 
ing, he  had  made  himself  believe  he  would  not 
like  that  kind  of  a  girl.  Every  morning  he  saw 
her  come  out  of  her  leafy  hut,  loose  the  goats 
from  the  corral,  which  was  all  of  cactus  stems 
and  broad  leaves  of  prickly-pear,  and  lead  them 
out  among  the  wind-blown  hillocks  of  sand 
under  which  the  trunks  of  the  mesquite  flour- 
ished for  a  hundred  years,  and  out  of  the  tops 
of  which  the  green  twigs  bore  leaves  and  fruit ; 
or  along  the  mesa  to  browse  on  bitterbrush 
and  the  tops  of  scrubby  sage.  Sometimes  she 
plaited  willows  for  the  coarser  kinds  of  basket- 
work,  or,  in  hot  noonings  while  the  flock  dozed, 
worked  herself  collars  and  necklaces  of  white 
and  red  and  turquoise-colored  beads,  and  other 
times  sat  dreaming  on  the  sand.  But  whatever 
she  did,  she  kept  far  enough  from  the  place  of 
the  Coyote-Spirit,  who,  now  that  he  had  met 
the  Weaving  Woman,  could  not  keep  his  mind 
off  her.  Her  hut  was  far  enough  from  the 
campoodie  so  that  every  morning  he  went 
around  by  the  Black  Rock  to  see  if  she  was 
still  there,  and  there  she  sat  weaving  patterns 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  51 

in  her  baskets  of  all  that  she  saw  or  thought. 
Now  it  would  be  the  winding  wash  and  the 
wattled  huts  beside  it,  now  the  mottled  skin 
of  the  rattlesnake  or  the  curled  plumes  of  the 
quail. 

At  last  the  Coyote-Spirit  grew  so  bold  that 
when  there  was  no  one  passing  on  the  trail  he 
would  go  and  walk  up  and  down  in  front  of  the 
wickiup.  Then  the  Weaving  Woman  would 
look  up  from  her  work  and  give  him  the  news 
of  the  season  and  the  tribesmen  in  so  friendly 
a  fashion  that  he  grew  less  and  less  troubled 
in  his  mind  about  working  her  mischief.  He 
said  in  his  evil  heart  that  since  the  ways  of 
such  as  he  were  known  to  the  Indians,  —  as  in- 
deed they  were,  with  many  a  charm  and  speh1 
to  keep  them  safe,  —  it  could  be  no  fault  of 
his  if  they  came  to  harm  through  too  much 
familiarity.  As  for  the  Weaving  Woman,  he 
said,  "She  sees  me  as  I  am,  and  ought  to 
know  better,"  for  he  had  not  heard  about  the 
infirmity  of  her  eyes. 

Finally  he  made  up  his  mind  to  ask  her  to 
go  with  him  to  dig  for  roots  around  the  foot 


52  THE   BASKET    WOMAN 

of  Pahranagat,  and  if  she  consented,  —  and  of 
course  she  did,  for  she  was  a  friendly  soul,  — 
he  knew  in  his  heart  what  he  would  do.  They 
went  out  by  the  mesa  trail,  and  it  was  a  soft 
and  blossomy  day  of  spring.  Long  wands  of  the 
creosote  with  shining  fretted  foliage  were  hung 
with  creamy  bells  of  bloom,  and  doves  called 
softly  from  the  Dripping  Spring.  They  passed 
rows  of  owlets  sitting  by  their  burrows  and  saw 
young  rabbits  playing  in  their  shallow  forms. 
The  Weaving  Woman  talked  gayly  as  they 
went,  as  Indian  women  talk,  with  soft  mellow 
voices  and  laughter  breaking  in  between  the 
words  like  smooth  water  flowing  over  stones. 
She  talked  of  how  the  deer  had  shifted  their 
feeding  grounds  and  of  whether  the  quail  had 
mated  early  that  year  as  a  sign  of  a  good  sea- 
son, matters  of  which  the  Coyote-Spirit  knew 
more  than  she,  only  he  was  not  thinking  of 
those  things  just  then.  Whenever  her  back 
was  turned  he  licked  his  cruel  jaws  and  whet- 
ted his  appetite.  They  passed  the  level  mesa, 
passed  the  tumbled  fragments  of  the  Black 
Rock  and  came  to  the  sharp  wall-sided  canons 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  53 

that  showed  the  stars  at  noon  from  their  deep 
wells  of  sombre  shade,  where  no  wild  creature 
made  its  home  and  no  birds  ever  sang.  Then 
the  Weaving  Woman  grew  still  at  last  because 
of  the  great  stillness,  and  the  Coyote-Spirit  said 
in  a  hungry,  whining  voice,  — 

"  Do  you  know  why  I  brought  you  here  ?  " 

"  To  show  me  how  still  and  beautiful  the 
world  is  here,"  said  the  Weaving  Woman,  and 
even  then  she  did  not  seem  afraid. 

"  To  eat  you  up,"  said  the  Coyote.  With 
that  he  looked  to  see  her  fall  quaking  at  his 
feet,  and  he  had  it  in  mind  to  tell  her  it  was  no 
fault  but  her  own  for  coming  so  far  astray  with 
one  of  his  kind,  but  the  woman  only  looked 
at  him  and  laughed.  The  sound  of  her  laugh- 
ter was  like  water  in  a  bubbling  spring. 

"Why  do  you  laugh?"  said  the  Coyote, 
and  he  was  so  astonished  that  his  jaws  remained 
open  when  he  had  done  speaking. 

"  How  could  you  eat  me  ?  "  said  she.  "  Only 
wild  beasts  could  do  that." 

"What  am  I,  then?" 

"  Oh,  you  are  only  a  man." 


54  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

"  I  am  a  coyote,"  said  he. 

"  Do  you  think  I  have  no  eyes  ?  "  said  the 
woman.  "  Come  !  "  For  she  did  not  understand 
that  her  eyes  were  different  from  other  people's, 
what  she  really  thought  was  that  other  people's 
were  different  from  hers,  which  is  quite  an- 
other matter,  so  she  pulled  the  Coyote-Spirit 
over  to  a  rain-fed  pool.  In  that  country  the 
rains  collect  in  basins  of  the  solid  rock  that 
grow  polished  with  a  thousand  years  of  storm 
and  give  back  from  their  shining  side  a  reflec- 
tion like  a  mirror.  One  such  lay  in  the  bottom 
of  the  black  canon,  and  the  Weaving  Woman 
stood  beside  it. 

Now  it  is  true  of  coyote-spirits  that  they 
are  so  only  because  of  their  behavior;  not 
only  have  they  power  to  turn  themselves  to 
men  if  they  wish  —  but  they  do  not  wish,  or 
they  would  not  have  become  coyotes  in  the 
first  place — but  other  people  in  their  company, 
according  as  they  think  man-thoughts  or  beast- 
thoughts,  can  throw  over  them  such  a  change 
that  they  have  only  to  choose  which  they  will 
be.  So  the  basket-weaver  contrived  to  throw 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  £5 

the  veil  of  her  mind  over  the  Coyote-Spirit,  so 
that  when  he  looked  at  himself  in  the  pool 
he  could  not  tell  for  the  life  of  him  whether 
he  was  most  coyote  or  most  man,  which  so 
frightened  him  that  he  ran  away  and  left  the 
Weaving  Woman  to  hunt  for  roots  alone.  He 
ran  for  three  days  and  nights,  being  afraid  of 
himself,  which  is  the  worst  possible  fear,  and 
then  ran  back  to  see  if  the  basket-maker  had 
not  changed  her  mind.  He  put  his  head  in  at 
the  door  of  her  wickiup. 

"Tell  me,  now,  am  I  a  coyote  or  a 
man?" 

"  Oh,  a  man,"  said  she,  and  he  went  off  to 
Pahranagat  to  think  it  over.  In  a  day  or  two 
he  came  back. 

"  And  what  now  ?  "  he  said. 

"  Oh,  a  man,  and  I  think  you  grow  hand- 
somer every  day." 

That  was  really  true,  for  what  with  her  in- 
sisting upon  it  and  his  thinking  about  it,  the 
beast  began  to  go  out  of  him  and  the  man  to 
come  back.  That  night  he  went  down  to  the 
campoodie  to  try  and  steal  a  kid  from  the 


56  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

corral,  but  it  occurred  to  him  just  in  time  that 
a  man  would  not  do  that,  so  he  went  back  to 
Pahranagat  and  ate  roots  and  berries  instead, 
which  was  a  true  sign  that  he  had  grown  into 
a  man  again.  Then  there  came  a  day  when 
the  Weaving  Woman  asked  him  to  stop  at  her 
hearth  and  eat.  There  was  a  savory  smell 
going  up  from  the  cooking-pots,  cakes  of 
mesquite  meal  baking  in  the  ashes,  and  sugary 
white  buds  of  the  yucca  palm  roasting  on  the 
coals.  The  man  who  had  been  a  coyote  lay 
on  a  blanket  of  rabbit  skin  and  heard  the 
cheerful  snapping  of  the  fire.  It  was  all  so 
comfortable  and  bright  that  somehow  it  made 
him  think  of  the  Goat-Girl. 

"  That  is  the  right  sort  of  a  girl,"  he  said 
to  himself.  "  She  has  always  stayed  in  the 
safe  open  places  and  gone  home  early.  She 
should  be  able  to  tell  me  what  I  am,"  for  he 
was  not  quite  sure,  and  since  he  had  begun 
to  walk  with  men  a  little,  he  had  heard  about 
the  Weaving  Woman's  eyes. 

Next  day  he  went  out  where  the  flock  fed, 
not  far  from  the  corn  lands,  and  the  Goat-Girl 


THE  COYOTE-SPIRIT  57 

did  not  seem  in  the  least  afraid  of  him.  So  he 
went  again,  and  the  third  day  he  said,  — 

"  Tell  me  what  I  seem  to  you." 

"  A  very  handsome  man,"  said  she. 

"  Then  will  you  marry  me  ?  "  said  he ;  and 
when  the  Goat-Girl  had  taken  time  to  think 
about  it  she  said  yes,  she  thought  she  would. 

Now,  when  the  man  who  had  been  a  coyote 
lay  on  the  blanket  of  the  Weaving  Woman's 
wickiup,  he  had  taken  notice  how  it  was  made 
of  willows  driven  into  the  ground  around  a 
pit  dug  in  the  earth,  and  the  poles  drawn 
together  at  the  top,  and  thatched  with  brush, 
and  he  had  tried  at  the  foot  of  Pahranagat 
until  he  had  built  another  like  it ;  so  when  he 
had  married  the  Goat-Girl,  after  the  fashion 
of  her  tribe,  he  took  her  there  to  live.  He 
was  not  now  afraid  of  anything  except  that 
his  wife  might  get  to  know  that  he  had  once 
been  a  coyote.  It  was  during  the  first  month 
of  their  marriage  that  he  said  to  her,  "Do 
you  know  the  basket-maker  who  lives  under 
the  bank  of  the  stony  wash  ?  They  call  her 
the  Weaving  Woman." 


58  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  I  have  heard  something  of  her  and  I  have 
bought  her  baskets.  Why  do  you  ask  ?  " 

"  It  is  nothing,"  said  the  man,  "but  I  hear 
strange  stories  of  her,  that  she  associates  with 
coyote -spirits  and  such  creatures,"  for  he 
wanted  to  see  what  his  wife  would  say  to 
that. 

"  If  that  is  the  case,"  said  she, "  the  less  we 
see  of  her  the  better.  One  cannot  be  too  care- 
ful in  such  matters." 

After  that,  when  the  man  who  had  been 
a  coyote  and  his  wife  visited  the  campoodie, 
they  turned  out  of  the  stony  wash  before  they 
reached  the  wickiup,  and  came  in  to  the  camp 
by  another  trail.  But  I  have  not  heard 
whether  the  Weaving  Woman  noticed  it. 


THE   CHEERFUL  GLACIER 


THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER 

VERY  many  years  ago,  at  the  foot  of  a  name- 
less peak  between  Mount  Ritter  and  Togo- 
bah,  after  three  successive  years  of  deep  snow 
there  was  a  glacier  born.  It  crept  out  fan- 
wise  from  a  furrow  on  the  mountain-side, 
very  high  up,  above  the  limit  of  the  white- 
barked  pines,  and  its  upper  end  was  lost  under 
the  drift  of  loose  snow  that  trailed  down  the 
slope.  For  three  successive  winters  the  gray 
veil  of  storms  hung  month-long  about  the 
crest  of  the  Sierras,  while  the  snow  came  fall- 
ing, falling,  and  the  wind  kept  heaping,  heap- 
ing, until  the  drifts  sagged  and  slipped  of 
their  own  weight  down  the  long  groove  of  the 
mountain;  and  since  it  lay  on  the  sunless 
northern  slope,  and  as  it  happened  the  sum- 
mers that  came  between  fell  cool  and  rainy, 
there,  when  the  spring  thaw  had  cleared  the 
loose  snow,  spread  out  on  a  little  stony  flat  lay 
the  rim  of  the  glacier.  Yet  it  was  a  very  little 


62  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

one,  a  rod  or  two  of  clear  shining  ice  that  ran 
into  deep  blue  and  gray  sludge  under  a  drift 
of  coarse,  whitish  granules,  and  very  high  up, 
fine  dry  particles  of  snow  like  powdered  glass. 
So  it  lay  at  the  time  of  year  when  the  moun- 
tain sheep  began  to  come  back  to  their  sum- 
mer feeding-grounds. 

When  the  thaw  had  cleared  the  heather 
and  warmed  the  lichened  rocks,  they  loosed 
their  hold  of  the  ice,  and  the  great  weight  of 
it  began  to  crawl  down  the  mountain.  At  the 
first  slow  thrill  of  motion  the  little  glacier 
creaked  with  delight. 

"  Ah,"  it  said,  "it  is  evident  that  I  am  not 
a  mere  snow  bank,  for  in  that  case  I  should 
remain  in  one  place.  Now  I  know  myself 
truly  a  glacier."  For  up  to  that  time  it  had 
been  in  some  doubt. 

By  the  end  of  the  summer  it  had  advanced 
more  than  a  span  in  the  shadow  of  the  peak. 
Then  the  snows  began,  deep  and  heavy,  but 
the  glacier  did  not  complain ;  it  hugged  the 
floor  of  the  rift  where  it  lay,  and  thought  of 
the  time  when  it  should  start  on  its  travels 


THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER  63 

again.  So,  because  of  thinking  about  it  so 
much,  or  because  the  snows  were  deeper  and 
the  summers  not  so  warm,  the  glacier  in- 
creased and  went  forward  until  it  had  quite 
crossed  the  stony  flat,  and  began  to  believe  it 
might  make  its  mark  in  the  world.  There 
were  any  number  of  reasons  for  thinking  so. 
To  begin  with,  all  that  neighborhood  was 
deeply  scarred  and  scoured  by  the  trail  of  old 
glaciers,  and  the  high  peaks  glittered  with  the 
keen  polish  of  ice  floes.  All  down  the  slope 
shone  glassy  bosses  of  clear  granite  succeed- 
ing to  beds  of  cassiope  and  blue  heather,  pol- 
ished slips  of  granite,  pentstemon  and  more 
heather,  smooth  granite  that  the  feet  could 
take  no  hold  upon,  then  saxifrage  and  meadow- 
sweet, and  so  down  to  the  stream  border, 
where  the  water  quarreled  with  the  stones. 
And  by  the  time  the  little  glacier  had  settled 
that  it  would  leave  such  a  mark  on  the  moun- 
tain-side, shining  and  softened  by  small  blos- 
somy  things,  it  had  come  quite  to  the  farthest 
border  of  the  flat,  and  looked  over  the  edge 
of  a  sharp  descent.  It  was  much  too  far  to 


64  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

bend  over,  for  though  the  glacier  was  all  of 
brittle  ice,  it  could  bend  a  little. 

"But  it  is  really  nothing,"  said  the  glacier. 
"  I  have  only  to  grind  down  the  cliff  until  it 
is  the  proper  height;"  and  it  took  a  firmer 
hold  on  the  sharp  fragments  of  stones  it  had 
gathered  on  its  way  down  the  ravine.  The 
pressure  of  the  sodden  snow  above  kept  on, 
however,  and  before  the  glacier  had  fairly 
begun  its  grinding  the  ice  rim  was  pushed  out 
beyond  the  bluff,  broke  off,  and  lay  at  the  foot 
in  a  shining  heap. 

"So  much  the  better,"  said  the  cheerful 
glacier.  "  What  with  grinding  above  and  fill- 
ing with  broken  ice  below,  the  work  will  be 
accomplished  in  half  the  time." 

But  that  never  really  happened,  for  this 
was  the  last  season  the  ice  reached  to  the  far 
edge  of  the  flat.  The  next  year  there  was 
less  snow  and  more  sun.  The  long  slope  of 
bare  rocks  gathered  up  the  heat  and  held  it 
so  that  the  ice  began  to  melt  underneath,  and 
a  stream  ran  from  it  and  fell  over  the  cliff  in 
a  fine  silvery  veil. 


THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER  65 

"How  very  fortunate,"  said  the  glacier, 
"  to  become  the  head  of  a  river  so  early  in  my 
career.  Besides,  this  is  a  much  easier  way  of 
getting  over  the  falls." 

Then  the  water  began  to  purr  in  sheer  con- 
tent where  it  went  among  the  stones ;  it  in- 
creased and  went  down  the  canon  toward  the 
white  torrent  of  the  creek  that  flowed  from 
Togobah,  and  the  next  summer  a  water  ousel 
found  it.  She  came  whirling  up  the  course 
of  the  stream  like  a  thrown  pebble,  plump 
and  slaty  blue,  scattering  a  spray  of  sound 
as  clear  and  round  as  the  trickle  of  ice  water 
that  went  over  the  falls.  The  ousel  sat  on 
the  edge  of  the  ice  rim  to  finish  her  song,  and 
it  timed  with  the  running  of  the  stream. 

"  You  should  understand,"  said  the  glacier, 
"  that  I  started  in  life  with  the  intention  of 
cutting  my  way  down  the  mountain.  But 
now  I  am  become  a  river  I  am  quite  as  well 


"Everything  is  the  best,"  said  the  ousel; 
"  that  has  been  the  motto  of  my  family  for  a 
long  time,  and  I  am  sure  I  have  proved  it." 


66  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

And  if  one  listened  close  as  she  flew  in  and 
out  of  the  falls  and  sought  in  the  white  tor- 
rent for  her  food,  one  understood  that  it  was 
the  burden  of  her  song.  "  Everything  is  the 
best,"  she  sang,  and  kept  on  singing  it  when 
the  glacier  had  grown  so  small  by  running 
that  it  was  quite  hollowed  out  under  the  roof 
of  granulated  snow,  and  the  light  came 
through  it  softly  and  wonderfully  blue.  Then 
the  ousel  would  go  far  up  into  this  ice  cave 
until  the  sound  of  her  singing  came  out  wild 
and  sweet,  mixed  with  the  water  and  the 
tinkle  of  the  ice.  As  for  the  words  of  her 
song,  the  glacier  never  disagreed  with  her, 
though  by  now  it  had  retreated  clear  across 
its  stony  flat.  But  the  wind  brought  in  the 
seeds  of  dwarf  willow  that  sprouted  and  took 
root,  and  bright  little  buttercups  began  to 
come  up  and  shiver  in  the  flood  of  ice  water. 
"It  seems  I  am  to  have  a  meadow  of  my 
own,"  said  the  glacier,  by  the  time  there  was 
stone-crop  and  purple  pentstemon  blowing  in 
the  damp  crevices  about  its  border.  "I  do 
not  believe  there  is  a  prettier  ice  garden  on 


THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER  67 

this  side  of  the  mountain.  And  to  think  that 
all  I  once  wished  was  to  leave  a  track  of  bare 
and  shining  stones !  The  ousel  is  right,  every- 
thing is  for  the  best." 

The  ousel  always  went  downstream  at  the 
beginning  of  the  winter,  when  the  running 
waters  were  shut  under  snow  bridges  and  the 
pools  were  puddles  of  gray  sludge,  down  and 
down  to  the  foothill  borders,  and  at  the  turn 
of  the  year  followed  up  again  in  the  wake  of 
the  thaw.  So  it  was  not  often  that  the  ousel 
and  the  glacier  saw  each  other  between  Octo- 
ber and  June. 

"But  of  course,"  said  the  glacier,  "the 
longer  you  are  away,  the  more  we  have  to  say 
to  each  other  when  you  come." 

"And  anyway  it  cannot  be  helped,"  said 
the  ousel.  For  though  she  did  not  mind  the 
storms  and  cold  weather,  one  cannot  really 
exist  without  eating. 

After  one  of  these  winter  trips,  the  ousel 
noticed  that  the  stream  that  came  over  the 
fall  had  quite  failed,  ran  only  a  slender  trickle 
that  dripped  among  the  shivering  fern  and 


68  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

was  lost  in  the  rock  crevices,  and  though  she 
was  such  a  cheerful  little  body,  she  did  not 
like  to  be  the  first  to  speak  of  it.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  glacier  could  not  last  much  longer 
at  that  rate.  So  she  flitted  about  in  the  lace- 
work  caverns  of  the  ice,  and  sang  airily  and 
sweet,  and  the  words  of  her  song  were  what 
they  had  always  been. 

"  That  is  quite  true,"  said  the  glacier.  "  You 
see  how  it  is  with  me ;  once  I  was  very  proud 
to  run  over  the  fall  with  a  splashing  sound, 
but  now  I  find  it  better  to  keep  all  the  water 
for  my  meadow." 

In  fact,  there  was  quite  a  border  of  sod  all 
about  where  the  ice  had  been,  and  a  great  mat 
of  white-belled  cassiope  in  the  middle.  It  grew 
greener  and  more  blossomy  every  year.  The 
ousel  grew  so  used  to  finding  it  there,  and  so 
pleased  with  the  society  of  the  glacier,  which 
was  quite  after  her  own  heart,  that  it  was  a 
great  grief  to  her  as  she  came  whirling  up  the 
stream  in  the  flood  tide  of  the  year  to  find 
that  they  had  both,  the  meadow  and  the  ice, 
wholly  disappeared. 


THE  CHEERFUL  GLACIER  69 

That  had  been  a  winter  of  long,  thunderous 
storms,  and  a  great  splinter  of  granite  had 
fallen  away  from  the  mountain  peaks  and  slid 
down  in  a  heap  of  rubble  over  the  place  where 
the  glacier  had  been.  There  was  now  no  trace 
of  it  under  sharp,  broken  stones. 

But  because  they  had  been  friends,  the  ousel 
could  not  keep  quite  away  from  the  place,  but 
came  again  and  again  and  flew  chirruping 
around  the  foot  of  the  hill.  One  of  those  days 
when  the  sun  was  strong  and  the  heather 
white  on  the  wild  headlands,  she  saw  a  slen- 
der rill  of  water  creeping  out  at  the  bottom 
of  the  rubbish  heap,  and  knew  at  once  by  the 
cheerful  sound  of  it  that  it  must  be  her  friend 
the  glacier,  or  what  was  left  of  it. 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  bubbled  the  spring,  "  it  is 
really  surprising  what  good  luck  I  have.  As 
a  glacier,  I  suppose  I  should  have  quite  melted 
away  in  a  few  summers ;  but  with  all  this  pro- 
tection of  loose  stones,  I  should  n't  wonder  if 
I  became  a  perennial  spring." 

And  in  fact  that  is  exactly  what  occurred, 
for  with  the  snow  that  sifted  down  between 


70  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

the  broken  boulders,  and  the  snow  water  that 
collected  in  the  hollow  where  the  meadow  had 
been,  the  spring  has  never  gone  quite  dry. 
Every  summer,  when  the  heather  and  pentste- 
mon  and  saxifrage  on  the  glacier  slip  are  at 
their  best,  the  cheerful  water  comes  out  of 
the  foot  of  the  nameless  peak  and  the  ousel 
comes  up  from  the  white  torrent  and  sits  upon 
the  stones.  Then  they  sing  together,  and  their 
voices  blend  perfectly ;  but  if  you  listen  care- 
fully, you  will  observe  that  the  words  of  their 
song  are  always  the  same. 


THE  MEBKY-GO-ROUND 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND 

THE  Basket  Woman  was  washing  for  the 
homesteader's  wife  at  the  spring,  and  Alan, 
by  this  time  very  good  friends  with  her,  was 
pulling  up  sagebrush  for  the  fire,  when  the 
coyote  came  by.  It  was  a  clear,  wide  morn- 
ing, warm  and  sweet,  with  gusty  flaws  of 
cooler  air  moving  down  from  Pine  Mountain. 
There  was  a  lake  of  purple  lupins  in  the  swale, 
and  the  last  faint  flush  of  wild  almonds  burn- 
ing on  the  slope.  The  grapevines  at  the  spring 
were  full  of  bloom  and  tender  leaf.  Eastward, 
above  the  high  tilted  mesa  under  the  open 
sky,  the  buzzards  were  making  a  merry-go- 
round.  That  was  the  way  Alan  always  thought 
of  their  performance  when  he  saw  them  cir- 
cling slantwise  under  the  sun.  Round  and 
round  they  went,  now  so  low  that  he  could 
see  how  the  shabby  wing  feathers  frayed  out 
at  the  edges,  now  so  high  that  they  became 
mere  specks  against  the  sky. 


74  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  What  makes  them  go  round  and  round  ?  " 
asked  Alan  of  the  mahala. 

"  They  go  about  to  wait  for  their  dinner, 
but  the  table  is  not  yet  spread,"  said  she.  The 
Basket  Woman  did  not  use  quite  such  good 
English;  but  though  Alan  understood  her 
broken  talk,  you  probably  would  not.  The 
little  boy  could  not  imagine,  though  he  tried, 
what  a  buzzard's  dinner  might  be  like.  The 
high  mesa,  with  the  water  of  mirage  rolling 
over  it,  was  a  kind  of  enchanted  land  to  him 
where  almost  anything  might  happen.  He 
would  lie  contentedly  for  hours  with  his  head 
pillowed  on  the  hillocks  of  blown  sand  about 
the  roots  of  the  sage,  and  look  up  at  the 
merry-go-round.  He  noticed  that,  although 
others  joined  them  from  the  invisible  upper 
sky,  none  ever  seemed  to  go  away,  but  hung 
and  circled  and  faded  into  the  thin  blue  deeps 
of  air.  Often  he  saw  them  settle  flockwise 
below  the  rim  of  the  mesa  and  beyond  his 
sight,  wondering  greatly  what  they  might  be 
about. 

The  morning  at  the  spring  he  watched  them 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  75 

in  the  intervals  of  tending  the  sagebrush  fire, 
and  then  it  was  that  the  coyote  came  by,  go- 
ing in  that  direction.  His  head  was  cocked  to 
one  side,  and  he  seemed  to  watch  the  merry- 
go-round  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye  as  he 
went. 

Alan  thought  the  little  gray  beast  had  not 
seen  them  at  the  spring,  but  in  that  he  was 
mistaken.  A  quarter  of  an  hour  before,  as  he 
came  up  out  of  the  gully  that  hid  his  lair,  the 
coyote  had  sighted  the  boy  and  the  Basket 
Woman  and  made  sure  in  his  own  mind  that 
they  had  no  gun.  So,  as  it  lay  in  his  way,  he 
came  quite  close  to  them ;  opposite  the  spring 
he  paused  a  moment  with  one  foot  lifted,  and 
eyed  them  with  a  wise  and  secret  look.  He 
went  on  toward  the  mesa,  stopped  again, 
looked  back  and  then  up  at  the  whirling  buz- 
zards, and  went  on  again. 

"  Where  does  that  one  go  ?  "  asked  Alan. 

"  Eh,"  said  the  Basket  Woman,  "  he  goes 
also  to  the  dinner.  It  is  good  eating  they  have 
out  there  on  the  mesa  together." 

Alan  looked  after  him,  and  the  coyote  paused 


76  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

and  looked  back  over  his  shoulder  as  one  who 
expects  to  be  followed,  and  quite  suddenly  it 
came  into  the  boy's  mind  to  go  up  on  the  mesa 
and  see  what  it  was  all  about.  The  Basket 
Woman  was  bent  above  her  tubs  and  did  not 
see  him  go ;  when  she  missed  him  she  supposed 
he  had  gone  back  to  the  house.  Alan  trotted 
on  after  the  coyote  until  he  lost  him  in  a 
sunken  place  full  of  boulders  and  black  sage ; 
but  he  had  been  headed  still  toward  that  spot 
above  which  the  black  wings  beat  dizzily,  and 
that  way  Alan  went,  climbing  by  the  help 
of  stout  shrubs  to  the  mesa,  which  here  fell 
off  steeply  to  the  valley,  and  then  on  until  he 
saw  his  coyote  or  another  one,  going  steadily 
toward  the  merry-go-round. 

The  mesa  was  very  warm,  and  swam  in  misty 
blueness  although  the  day  was  clear.  Dim 
shapes  of  mountains  stood  up  on  the  far  edge, 
and  near  by  a  procession  of  lonely,  low  hills 
rounded  like  the  backs  of  dolphins  appearing 
out  of  the  sea.  Stubby  shrubs  as  tall  as  Alan's 
shoulder  covered  the  mesa  sparingly,  and  in 
wide  spaces  there  were  beds  of  yellow-flowered 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  77 

prickly-pear ;  singly  and  far  stood  up  tall  stems 
of  white-belled  yucca,  called  in  that  country 
Candles  of  Our  Lord.  Alan  could  not  follow 
the  coyote  close  among  the  scrub,  but  dropped 
presently  into  a  cattle  trail  that  ran  toward  the 
place  where  he  supposed  the  coyote's  dinner 
must  be,  and  so  trudged  on  in  it  while  the  sun 
wheeled  high  in  the  heavens  and  the  whole  air 
of  the  mesa  quivered  with  the  heat. 

It  is  certain  that  in  his  wanderings  Alan 
must  have  traveled  that  day  and  the  next  as 
much  as  twenty  miles  from  the  spring,  though 
lie  might  easily  have  been  lost  in  less  time,  for 
his  head  hardly  came  above  the  tops  of  the 
scrub,  and  there  were  no  landmarks  to  guide 
by,  other  than  the  low  hills  which  seemed  to 
alter  nothing  whichever  way  one  looked  at 
them.  As  for  the  buzzards,  they  rose  higher 
and  higher  into  the  dim,  quivering  air.  Alan 
began  to  be  thirsty,  next  tired,  and  then  hun- 
gry. He  tried  to  turn  toward  home,  but  got 
no  nearer,  and  finally  understood  that  he  might 
be  lost,  so  he  ran  about  wildly  for  a  time,  which 
made  matters  no  better.  He  began  to  cry  and 


78  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

to  run  eagerly  at  the  same  time  until,  blind 
and  breathless,  he  would  fall  and  lie  sobbing, 
and  wish  that  he  might  see  his  mother  or  the 
Basket  Woman  come  walking  across  the  mesa 
with  her  basket  on  her  back.  By  this  time  it 
was  hot  and  close  and  he  had  come  where  the 
scant-leaved  shrubs  were  far  between,  and 
with  heat  and  running  the  tears  were  dried  out 
of  him.  He  sobbed  in  his  breath  and  his  lips 
were  cracked  and  dry.  It  fell  cooler  as  night 
drew  on,  but  he  grew  sick  with  hunger,  and 
shuddered  with  the  fear  of  darkness.  Far  off 
across  the  mesa  the  coyotes  began  to  howl. 

Down  in  the  homesteader's  cabin  nobody 
slept  that  night.  When  they  first  missed  Alan, 
which  was  at  noon,  no  one  had  the  least  idea 
where  he  was.  His  mother  had  supposed  him 
at  the  spring,  and  the  Basket  Woman  thought 
he  had  gone  to  his  mother.  It  was  all  open 
ground  about  the  cabin  from  the  mesa  and  the 
foot  of  the  hills,  and  below  it  toward  the  val- 
ley bare  stretches  of  moon-white  sands. 

The  homesteader  thought  that  the  boy 
might  have  gone  to  the  campoodie ;  but  there 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  79 

they  found  he  had  not  been,  and  none  of  the 
Indians  had  seen  him  ;  but  by  three  of  the  clock 
they  were  all  out  beating  about  the  spring  to 
pick  up  the  light  trail  of  his  feet,  and  there 
they  were  when  the  quick  dark  came  on  and 
stopped  them. 

By  the  earliest  light  of  the  next  morning 
the  Basket  Woman,  who  was  really  very  fond 
of  him,  had  come  out  of  her  hut  to  ask  for 
news,  but  when  she  had  looked  up  to  the  sky 
for  a  token  of  what  the  day  was  to  be,  she 
saw  the  buzzards  come  slantwise  out  of  space 
and  begin  the  merry-go-round.  All  at  once 
she  remembered  Alan's  question  of  the  day 
before,  and  though  she  could  not  reasonably 
expect  any  one  to  take  any  notice  of  it,  an  idea 
came  into  her  head  and  a  gleam  into  her  beady 
eyes.  She  caught  her  pony  from  the  corral, 
riding  him  astride  as  Indian  women  ride,  with 
the  wicker  water  bottle  slung  across  her 
shoulder  and  a  parcel  of  food  hid  in  her  bosom. 
She  went  up  the  mesa  rim  toward  the  spot 
where  the  buzzards  swung  circling  in  the  sky. 

When  Alan  awoke  that  morning  under  the 


80  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

creosote  bush,  he  thought  he  must  have  come 
nearly  to  the  place  he  had  meant  to  find  the 
day  before.  There  was  the  coyote  skulking 
out  in  the  cactus  scrub,  and  the  buzzards 
wheeling  low  and  large.  It  was  a  hot,  smoky 
morning,  the  soil  was  all  of  coarse  gravel,  loose 
and  white.  Over  to  the  right  of  him  lay  a  still 
blue  pool,  and  a  broad  river  flowed  into  it  in 
soft  billows  without  sound.  The  coyote  went 
toward  it,  looking  back  over  his  shoulder,  and 
Allan  followed,  for  his  tongue  was  swollen  in 
his  mouth  with  thirst.  The  little  boy  was  quite 
clear  in  his  mind ;  he  knew  that  he  was  lost, 
that  he  was  very  hungry,  and  that  it  was 
necessary  to  find  his  father  and  mother  very 
soon.  As  he  had  come  toward  the  mountains 
the  day  before,  he  thought  that  he  should  start 
directly  away  from  them.  He  thought  he  could 
not  be  far  from  the  campoodie,  for  it  came 
to  him  dimly  that  he  had  heard  the  Indians 
singing  the  coyote  song  in  the  night,  but  he 
meant  to  have  a  drink  in  the  soft  still  billows 
of  the  stream.  A  little  ahead  of  him  the  coyote 
seemed  to  have  gone  into  it,  his  head  just 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  81 

cleared  the  surface,  and  the  water  heaved  to 
the  movements  of  his  shoulders.  But  somehow 
Alan  got  no  nearer  to  it.  The  stream  seemed 
to  loop  and  curve  away  from  him,  and  pre- 
sently he  saw  the  lake  behind  him  and  could 
not  think  how  that  could  be,  for  he  did  not  un- 
derstand that  it  was  a  lake  and  river  of  mirage. 
He  saw  the  trees  stand  up  on  its  borders,  and 
fancied  that  the  air  which  came  from  it  was 
moist  and  cool.  Always  the  coyote  went  be- 
fore and  showed  him  the  way,  and  at  last  he 
lifted  up  his  long  thin  muzzle  and  made  a 
doleful  cry.  Mostly  it  seemed  to  Alan  that  the 
coyotes  howled  like  dogs,  but  a  little  crazily ; 
now  it  appeared  that  this  one  spoke  in  words 
that  he  could  understand.  When  he  told  his 
mother  of  it  afterwards,  she  said  it  was  only 
the  fever  of  his  thirst  and  fatigue,  but  the 
Basket  Woman  believed  him. 

"  Ho,  ho ! "  cried  the  coyote,  "  come,  come, 
my  brothers,  to  the  hunting !  Come  !  " 

A  great  black  shadow  of  wings  fell  over 
them  and  a  voice  cried  huskily,  "  What  of  the 
quarry  ?  " 


82  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  The  quarry  is  close  at  hand,"  said  the 
coyote,  and  Alan  wondered  dizzily  what  they 
might  be  talking  about.  He  could  not  look  up, 
for  his  eyes  were  nearly  blinded  by  the  light 
that  beat  up  from  the  sand,  but  he  saw  wing 
shadows  thickening  on  the  ground. 

"  Where  do  you  go  now  ?  "  cried  the  voice 
in  the  upper  air. 

"  Round  and  about  to  the  false  water  until 
he  is  very  weary,"  said  the  coyote;  and  it 
seemed  to  Alan  that  he  must  follow  where  the 
gray  dog  went  in  a  maze  of  moving  shadows. 
He  trembled  and  fell  from  weakness  a  great 
many  times  and  lay  with  his  face  in  the  shel- 
ter of  the  prickle  bushes,  but  always  he  got 
up  and  went  on  again. 

"  Have  a  care,"  cried  the  voice  in  the  air, 
"  here  comes  one  of  his  own  kind." 

"  What  and  where  ?  "  said  the  coyote. 

"  It  is  a  brown  one  riding  on  a  horse ;  she 
comes  up  from  the  gully  of  big  rocks." 

"Does  she  follow  a  trail?"  panted  the 
coyote. 

"  She  follows  no  trail,  but  rides  fast  in  this 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  83 

direction,"  croaked  the  voice,  but  Alan  took 
no  interest  in  it.  He  did  not  know  that  it  was 
the  Basket  Woman  coming  to  rescue  him.  He 
thought  of  the  merry-go-round,  for  he  saw  that 
he  had  come  back  to  the  creosote  bush  where 
he  had  spent  the  night,  and  he  thought  the 
earth  had  come  round  with  him,  for  it  rocked 
and  reeled  as  he  went.  His  tongue  hung  out 
of  his  mouth  and  his  lips  cracked  and  bled, 
his  feet  were  blistered  and  aching  from  -the 
sharp  rocks,  the  hot  sands,  and  cactus  thorns. 
Round  and  round  with  him  went  scrub  and 
sand,  on  one  side  the  shadow  of  black  wings, 
and  on  the  other  the  smooth  flow  of  mirage 
water  which  he  might  never  reach.  Through 
it  all  he  could  hear  the  soft  biff,  biff  of  the 
broad  wings  and  the  long,  hungry,  whining 
howl  that  seemed  to  detach  itself  from  any 
throat  and  come  upon  him  from  all  quarters  of 
the  quivering  air.  Dizzily  went  the  merry-go- 
round,  and  now  it  seemed  that  the  false  water 
swung  nearer,  that  it  went  around  with  him, 
that  it  bore  him  up,  for  he  no  longer  felt  the 
earth  under  him,  that  it  buoyed  and  floated 


84  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

him  far  out  from  the  place  where  he  had  been, 
that  it  grew  deliciously  cool  at  last,  that  it 
laved  his  face  and  flowed  in  his  parched  throat ; 
and  at  last  he  opened  his  eyes  and  found  the 
Basket  Woman  trickling  water  in  his  mouth 
from  her  wicker  water  bottle.  It  was  noon  of 
his  second  day  from  home  when  she  found 
him  on  Cactus  Flat,  by  going  straight  to  the 
point  where  she  saw  the  black  wings  hang- 
ing in  the  air.  She  laid  him  on  the  horse  be- 
fore her  and  dripped  water  in  his  mouth  and 
coaxed  and  called  to  him,  but  never  left  off 
riding  nor  halted  until  she  came  up  with  others 
of  the  search  party  who  had  followed  up  by 
the  place  where  Alan  had  climbed  to  the  mesa, 
and  followed  slowly  by  a  faint  trail.  But  to 
Alan  it  was  all  as  if  he  had  dreamed  that  the 
Basket  Woman  had  brought  him  as  before 
from  the  valley  of  Corn  Water.  The  first  that 
he  realized  was  that  his  father  had  him,  and 
that  his  mother  was  crying  and  kissing  the 
Basket  Woman.  It  was  several  days  before  he 
was  able  to  be  about  again,  and  then  only 
under  promise  that  he  would  go  no  farther 


THE  MERRY-GO-ROUND  85 

than  the  spring.  The  first  thing  he  saw  when 
he  looked  Up  was  the  buzzards  high  up  over 
the  mesa  making  a  merry-go-round  in  the 
clear  blue,  and  it  was  then  he  remembered 
that  he  had  not  yet  found  out  what  it  was  all 
about. 


THE  CHRIST^  A£  TREE 


THE  CHEISTMAS  TREE 

EASTWARD  from  the  Sierras  rises  a  strong  red 
hill  known  as  Pine  Mountain,  though  the  In- 
dians call  it  The  Hill  of  Summer  Snow.  At 
its  foot  stands  a  town  of  a  hundred  board 
houses,  given  over  wholly  to  the  business  of 
mining.  The  noise  of  it  goes  on  by  day  and 
night, — the  creak  of  the  windlasses,  the  growl 
of  the  stamps  in  the  mill,  the  clank  of  the  cars 
running  down  to  the  dump,  and  from  the  open 
doors  of  the  drinking  saloons,  great  gusts  of 
laughter  and  the  sound  of  singing.  Billows 
of  smoke  roll  up  from  the  tall  stacks  and  by 
night  are  lit  ruddily  by  the  smelter  fires  all 
going  at  a  roaring  blast. 

Whenever  the  charcoal-burner's  son  looked 
down  on  the  red  smoke,  the  glare,  and  the  hot 
breath  of  the  furnaces,  it  seemed  to  him  like 
an  exhalation  from  the  wickedness  that  went 
on  continually  in  the  town ;  though  all  he  knew 


90  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

of  wickedness  was  the  word,  a  rumor  from 
passers-by,  and  a  kind  of  childish  fear.  The 
charcoal-burner's  cabin  stood  on  a  spur  of  Pine 
Mountain  two  thousand  feet  above  the  town, 
and  sometimes  the  boy  went  down  to  it  on 
the  back  of  the  laden  burros  when  his  father 
carried  charcoal  to  the  furnaces.  All  else  that 
he  knew  were  the  wild  creatures  of  the  moun- 
tain, the  trees,  the  storms,  the  small  flowering 
things,  and  away  at  the  back  of  his  heart  a 
pale  memory  of  his  mother  like  the  faint  for- 
est odor  that  clung  to  the  black  embers  of  the 
pine.  They  had  lived  in  the  town  when  the 
mother  was  alive  and  the  father  worked  in 
the  mines.  There  were  not  many  women  or 
children  in  the  town  at  that  time,  but  mining 
men  jostling  with  rude  quick  ways;  and  the 
young  mother  was  not  happy. 

"  Never  let  my  boy  grow  up  in  such  a  place," 
she  said  as  she  lay  dying ;  and  when  they  had 
buried  her  in  the  coarse  shallow  soil,  her  hus- 
band looked  for  comfort  up  toward  The  Hill 
of  Summer  Snow  shining  purely,  clear  white 
and  quiet  in  the  sun.  It  swam  in  the  upper 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  91 

air  above  the  sooty  reek  of  the  town  and 
seemed  as  if  it  called.  Then  he  took  the  young 
child  up  to  the  mountain,  built  a  cabin  under 
the  tamarack  pines,  and  a  pit  for  burning 
charcoal  for  the  furnace  fires. 

No  one  could  wish  for  a  better  place  for 
a  boy  to  grow  up  in  than  the  slope  of  Pine 
Mountain.  There  was  the  drip  of  pine  balm 
and  a  wind  like  wine,  white  water  in  the  springs, 
and  as  much  room  for  roaming  as  one  desired. 
The  charcoal-burner's  son  chose  to  go  far, 
coming  back  with  sheaves  of  strange  bloom 
from  the  edge  of  snow  banks  on  the  high 
ridges,  bright  spar  or  peacock-painted  ores, 
hatfuls  of  berries,  or  strings  of  shining  trout. 
He  played  away  whole  mornings  in  glacier 
meadows  where  he  heard  the  eagle  scream; 
walking  sometimes  in  a  mist  of  cloud  he  came 
upon  deer  feeding,  or  waked  them  from  their 
lair  in  the  deep  fern.  On  snow-shoes  in  winter 
he  went  over  the  deep  drifts  and  spied  among 
the  pine  tops  on  the  sparrows,  the  grouse,  and 
the  chilly  robins  wintering  under  the  green 
tents.  The  deep  snow  lifted  him  up  and  held 


92  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

him  among  the  second  stories  of  the  trees. 
But  that  was  not  until  he  was  a  great  lad, 
straight  and  springy  as  a  young  fir.  As  a 
little  fellow  he  spent  his  days  at  the  end  of 
a  long  rope  staked  to  a  pine  just  out  of  reach 
of  the  choppers  and  the  charcoal-pits.  When 
he  was  able  to  go  about  alone,  his  father  made 
him  give  three  promises:  never  to  follow  a 
bear's  trail  nor  meddle  with  the  cubs,  never  to 
try  to  climb  the  eagle  rocks  after  the  young 
eagles,  never  to  lie  down  nor  to  sleep  on  the 
sunny,  south  slope  where  the  rattlesnakes  fre- 
quented. After  that  he  was  free  of  the  whole 
wood. 

When  Mathew,  for  so  the  boy  was  called, 
was  ten  years  old,  he  began  to  be  of  use  about 
the  charcoal-pits,  to  mark  the  trees  for  cutting, 
to  sack  the  coals,  to  keep  the  house,  and  cook 
his  father's  meals.  He  had  no  companions  of 
his  own  age  nor  wanted  any,  for  at  this  time 
he  loved  the  silver  firs.  A  group  of  them  grew 
in  a  swale  below  the  cabin,  tall  and  fine ;  the 
earth  under  them  was  slippery  and  brown  with 
needles.  Where  they  stood  close  together  with 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  93 

overlapping  boughs  the  light  among  the  tops 
was  golden  green,  but  between  the  naked 
boles  it  was  a  vapor  thin  and  blue.  These  were 
the  old  trees  that  had  wagged  their  tops  to- 
gether for  three  hundred  years.  Around  them 
stood  a  ring  of  saplings  and  seedlings  scat- 
tered there  by  the  parent  firs,  and  a  little  apart 
from  these  was  the  one  that  Mathew  loved. 
It  was  slender  of  trunk  and  silvery  white,  the 
branches  spread  out  fanwise  to  the  outline  of 
a  perfect  spire.  In  the  spring,  when  the  young 
growth  covered  it  as  with  a  gossamer  web,  it 
gave  out  a  pleasant  odor,  and  it  was  to  him  like 
the  memory  of  what  his  mother  had  been. 
Then  he  garlanded  it  with  flowers  and  hung 
streamers  of  white  clematis  all  heavy  with 
bloom  upon  its  boughs.  He  brought  it  berries 
in  cups  of  bark  and  sweet  water  from  the 
spring ;  always  as  long  as  he  knew  it,  it  seemed 
to  him  that  the  fir  tree  had  a  soul. 

The  first  trip  he  had  ever  made  on  snow- 
shoes  was  to  see  how  it  fared  among  the  drifts. 
That  was  always  a  great  day  when  he  could  find 
the  slender  cross  of  its  topmost  bough  above  the 


94  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

snow.  The  fir  was  not  very  tall  in  those  days, 
but  the  snows  as  far  down  on  the  slope  as  the 
charcoal-burner's  cabin  lay  shallowly.  There 
was  a  time  when  Mathew  expected  to  be  as 
tall  as  the  fir,  but  after  a  while  the  boy  did  not 
grow  so  fast  and  the  fir  kept  on  adding  its 
whorl  of  young  branches  every  year. 

Mathew  told  it  all  his  thoughts.  When  at 
times  there  was  a  heaviness  in  his  breast  which 
was  really  a  longing  for  his  mother,  though  he 
did  not  understand  it,  he  would  part  the  low 
spreading  branches  and  creep  up  to  the  slen- 
der trunk  of  the  fir.  Then  he  would  put  his 
arms  around  it  and  be  quiet  for  a  long  beau- 
tiful time.  The  tree  had  its  own  way  of  com- 
forting him ;  the  branches  swept  the  ground 
and  shut  him  in  dark  and  close.  He  made  a 
little  cairn  of  stones  under  it  and  kept  his  trea- 
sures there. 

Often  as  he  sat  snuggled  up  to  the  heart  of 
the  tree,  the  boy  would  slip  his  hand  over  the 
smooth  intervals  between  the  whorls  of  boughs, 
and  wonder  how  they  knew  the  way  to  grow. 
All  the  fir  trees  are  alike  in  this,  that  they 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  95 

throw  out  their  branches  from  the  main  stem 
like  the  rays  of  a  star,  one  added  to  another 
with  the  season's  growth.  They  stand  out 
stiffly  from  the  trunk,  and  the  shape  of  each 
new  bough  in  the  beginning  and  the  shape  of 
the  last  growing  twig  when  they  have  spread 
out  broadly  with  many  branchlets,  bending 
with  the  weight  of  their  own  needles,  is  the 
shape  of  a  cross  ;  and  the  topmost  sprig  that 
rises  above  all  the  star-built  whorls  is  a  long 
and  slender  cross,  until  by  the  springing  of 
new  branches  it  becomes  a  star.  So  the  two 
forms  go  on  running  into  and  repeating  each 
other,  and  each  star  is  like  all  the  stars,  and 
every  bough  is  another's  twin.  It  is  this  trim 
and  certain  growth  that  sets  out  the  fir  from 
all  the  mountain  trees,  and  gives  to  the  young 
saplings  a  secret  look  as  they  stand  straight 
and  stiffly  among  the  wild  brambles  on  the 
hill.  For  the  wood  delights  to  grow  abroad  at 
all  points,  and  one  might  search  a  summer 
long  without  finding  two  leaves  of  the  oak 
alike,  or  any  two  trumpets  of  the  spangled 
mimulus.  So,  as  at  that  time  he  had  nothing 


96  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

better  worth  studying  about,  Mathew  noticed 
and  pondered  the  secret  of  the  silver  fir,  and 
grew  up  with  it  until  he  was  twelve  years  old 
and  tall  and  strong  for  his  age.  By  this  time 
the  charcoal-burner  began  to  be  troubled  about 
the  boy's  schooling. 

Meantime  there  was  rioting  and  noise  and 
coming  and  going  of  strangers  in  the  town  at 
the  foot  of  Pine  Mountain,  and  the  furnace 
blast  went  on  ruddily  and  smokily.  Because 
of  the  things  he  heard  Mathew  was  afraid, 
and  on  rare  occasions  when  he  went  down  to 
it  he  sat  quietly  among  the  charcoal  sacks,  and 
would  not  go  far  away  from  them  except  when 
he  held  his  father  by  the  hand.  After  a  time 
it  seemed  life  went  more  quietly  there,  flowers 
began  to  grow  in  the  yards  of  the  houses,  and 
they  met  children  walking  in  the  streets  with 
books  upon  their  arms. 

"  Where  are  they  going,  father  ?  "  said  the 
boy. 

"  To  school,"  said  the  charcoal-burner. 

"  And  may  I  go  ?  "  asked  Mathew. 

"Not  yet,  my  son." 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  97 

But  one  day  his  father  pointed  out  the 
foundations  of  a  new  building  going  up  in  the 
town. 

"  It  is  a  church,"  he  said,  "  and  when  that 
is  finished  it  will  be  a  sign  that  there  will  be 
women  here  like  your  mother,  and  then  you 
may  go  to  school." 

Mathew  ran  and  told  the  fir  tree  all  about  it. 

"But  I  will  never  forget  you,  never,"  he 
cried,  and  he  kissed  the  trunk.  Day  by  day, 
from  the  spur  of  the  mountain,  he  watched 
the  church  building,  and  it  was  wonderful 
how  much  he  could  see  in  that  clear,  thin  at- 
mosphere; no  other  building  in  town  inter- 
ested him  so  much.  He  saw  the  walls  go  up 
and  the  roof,  and  the  spire  rise  skyward  with 
something  that  glittered  twinkling  on  its  top. 
Then  they  painted  the  church  white  and  hung 
a  bell  in  the  tower.  Mathew  fancied  he  could 
hear  it  of  Sundays  as  he  saw  the  people  mov- 
ing* along  like  specks  in  the  streets. 

"  Next  week,"  said  the  father,  "  the  school 
begins,  and  it  is  time  for  you  to  go  as  I  pro- 
mised. I  will  come  to  see  you  once  a  month, 


98  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

and  when  the  term  is  over  you  shall  come 
back  to  the  mountain."  Mathew  said  good- 
by  to  the  fir  tree,  and  there  were  tears  in  his 
eyes  though  he  was  happy.  "  I  shall  think  of 
you  very  often,"  he  said,  "and  wonder  how  you 
are  getting  along.  When  I  come  back  I  will 
tell  you  everything  that  happens.  I  will  go  to 
church,  and  I  am  sure  I  shall  like  that.  It  has 
a  cross  on  top  like  yours,  only  it  is  yellow  and 
shines.  Perhaps  when  I  am  gone  I  shall  learn 
why  you  carry  a  cross,  also."  Then  he  went 
a  little  timidly,  holding  fast  by  his  father's 
hand. 

There  were  so  many  people  in  the  town 
that  it  was  quite  as  strange  and  fearful  to  him 
as  it  would  be  to  you  who  have  grown  up  in 
town  to  be  left  alone  in  the  wood.  At  night, 
when  he  saw  the  charcoal-burner's  fires  glow- 
ing up  in  the  air  where  the  bulk  of  the  moun- 
tain melted  into  the  dark,  he  would  cry  a  little 
under  the  blankets,  but  after  he  began  to 
learn,  there  was  no  more  occasion  for  crying. 
It  was  to  the  child  as  though  there  had  been 
a  candle  lighted  in  a  dark  room.  On  Sunday 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  99 

he  went  to  the  church,  and  then  it  was  both 
light  and  music,  for  he  heard  the  minister 
read  about  God  in  the  great  book  and  be- 
lieved it  all,  for  everything  that  happens  in 
the  woods  is  true,  and  people  who  grow  up  in 
it  are  best  at  believing.  Mathew  thought  it 
was  all  as  the  minister  said,  that  there  is  no- 
thing better  than  pleasing  God.  Then  when  he 
lay  awake  at  night  he  would  try  to  think  how 
it  would  have  been  with  him  if  he  had  never 
come  to  this  place.  In  his  heart  he  began  to 
be  afraid  of  the  time  when  he  would  have  to 
go  back  to  the  mountain,  where  there  was  no 
one  to  tell  him  about  this  most  important 
thing  in  the  world,  for  his  father  never  talked 
to  him  of  these  things.  It  preyed  upon  his 
mind,  but  if  any  one  noticed  it,  they  thought 
that  he  pined  for  his  father  and  wished  him- 
self at  home. 

It  drew  toward  midwinter,  and  the  white 
cap  on  The  Hill  of  Summer  Snow,  which 
never  quite  melted  even  in  the  warmest 
weather,  began  to  spread  downward  until  it 
reached  the  charcoal-burner's  home.  There 


100  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

was  a  great  stir  and  excitement  among  the 
children,  for  it  had  been  decided  to  have  a 
Christmas  tree  in  the  church.  Every  Sunday 
now  the  Christ-child  story  was  told  over  and 
grew  near  and  brighter  like  the  Christmas 
star.  Mathew  had  not  known  about  it  before, 
except  that  on  a  certain  day  in  the  year  his 
father  had  bought  him  toys.  He  had  sup- 
posed that  it  was  because  it  was  stormy  and 
he  had  to  be  indoors.  Now  he  was  wrapped 
up  in  the  story  of  love  and  sacrifice,  and  felt 
his  heart  grow  larger  as  he  breathed  it  in, 
looking  upon  clear  windless  nights  to  see  if 
he  might  discern  the  Star  of  Bethlehem  rising 
over  Pine  Mountain  and  the  Christ-child  come 
walking  on  the  snow.  It  was  not  that  he 
really  expected  it,  but  that  the  story  was  so 
alive  in  him.  It  is  easy  for  those  who  have 
lived  long  in  the  high  mountains  to  believe 
in  beautiful  things.  Mathew  wished  in  his 
heart  that  he  might  never  go  away  from  this 
place.  He  sat  in  his  seat  in  church,  and  all 
that  the  minister  said  sank  deeply  into  his 
mind. 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  101 

When  it  came  time  to  decide  about  the 
tree,  because  Mathew's  father  was  a  charcoal- 
burner  and  knew  where  the  best  trees  grew, 
it  was  quite  natural  to  ask  him  to  furnish  the 
tree  for  his  part.  Mathew  fairly  glowed  with 
delight,  and  his  father  was  pleased,  too,  for 
he  liked  to  have  his  son  noticed.  The  Satur- 
day before  Christmas,  which  fell  on  Tuesday 
that  year,  was  the  time  set  for  going  for  the 
tree,  and  by  that  time  Mathew  had  quite 
settled  in  his  mind  that  it  should  be  his  silver 
fir.  He  did  not  know  how  otherwise  he  could 
bring  the  tree  to  share  in  his  new  delight,  nor 
what  else  he  had  worth  giving,  for  he  quite 
believed  what  he  had  been  told,  that  it  is 
only  through  giving  the  best  beloved  that 
one  comes  to  the  heart's  desire.  With  all  his 
heart  Mathew  wished  never  to  live  in  any 
place  where  he  might  not  hear  about  God. 
So  when  his  father  was  ready  with  the  ropes 
and  the  sharpened  axe,  the  boy  led  the  way 
to  the  silver  firs. 

"  Why,  that  is  a  little  beauty,"  said  the 
charcoal-burner,  "  and  just  the  right  size." 


102  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

They  were  obliged  to  shovel  away  the 
snow  to  get  at  it  for  cutting,  and  Mathew 
turned  away  his  face  when  the  chips  began  to 
fly.  The  tree  fell  upon  its  side  with  a  shud- 
dering sigh ;  little  beads  of  clear  resin  stood 
out  about  the  scar  of  the  axe.  It  seemed  as 
if  the  tree  wept.  But  how  graceful  and  trim  it 
looked  when  it  stood  in  the  church  waiting 
for  gifts !  Mathew  hoped  that  it  would  under- 
stand. 

The  charcoal-burner  came  to  church  on 
Christmas  eve,  the  first  time  in  many  years. 
It  makes  a  difference  about  these  things  when 
you  have  a  son  to  take  part  in  them.  The 
church  and  the  tree  were  alight  with  candles ; 
to  the  boy  it  seemed  like  what  he  supposed 
the  place  of  dreams  might  be.  One  large  can- 
dle burned  on  the  top  of  the  tree  and  threw 
out  pointed  rays  like  a  star ;  it  made  the  char- 
coal-burner's son  think  of  Bethlehem.  Then 
he  heard  the  minister  talking,  and  it  was  all 
of  a  cross  and  a  star ;  but  Mathew  could  only 
look  at  the  tree,  for  he  saw  that  it  trembled, 
and  he  felt  that  he  had  betrayed  it.  Then  the 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  103 

choir  began  to  sing,  and  the  candle  on  top  of 
the  tree  burned  down  quite  low,  and  Mathew 
saw  the  slender  cross  of  the  topmost  bough 
stand  up  dark  before  it.  Suddenly  he  remem- 
bered his  old  puzzle  about  it,  how  the  small- 
est twigs  were  divided  off  in  each  in  the  shape 
of  a  cross,  how  the  boughs  repeated  the  star 
form  every  year,  and  what  was  true  of  his 
fir  was  true  of  them  all.  Then  it  must  have 
been  that  there  were  tears  in  his  eyes,  for  he 
could  not  see  plainly :  the  pillars  of  the  church 
spread  upward  like  the  shafts  of  the  trees,  and 
the  organ  playing  was  like  the  sound  of  the 
wind  in  their  branches,  and  the  stately  star- 
built  firs  rose  up  like  spires,  taller  than  the 
church  tower,  each  with  a  cross  on  top.  The 
sapling  which  was  still  before  him  trembled 
more,  moving  its  boughs  as  if  it  spoke ;  and  the 
boy  heard  it  in  his  heart  and  believed,  for  it 
spoke  to  him  of  God.  Then  all  the  fear  went 
out  of  his  heart  and  he  had  no  more  dread  of 
going  back  to  the  mountain  to  spend  his  days, 
for  now  he  knew  that  he  need  never  be  away 
from  the  green  reminder  of  hope  and  sacrifice 


104  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

in  the  star  and  the  cross  of  the  silver  fir ;  and 
the  thought  broadened  in  his  mind  that  he 
might  find  more  in  the  forest  than  he  had  ever 
thought  to  find,  now  that  he  knew  what  to  look 
for,  since  everything  speaks  of  God  in  its  own 
way  and  it  is  only  a  matter  of  understanding 
how. 

It  was  very  gay  in  the  little  church  that 
Christmas  night,  with  laughter  and  bonbons 
flying  about,  and  every  child  had  a  package  of 
candy  and  an  armful  of  gifts.  The  charcoal- 
burner  had  his  pockets  bulging  full  of  toys, 
and  Mathew's  eyes  glowed  like  the  banked  fires 
of  the  charcoal-pits  as  they  walked  home  in 
the  keen,  windless  night. 

"  Well,  my  boy,"  said  the  charcoal-burner, 
"I  am  afraid  you  will  not  be  wanting  to 
go  back  to  the  mountain  with  me  after 
this." 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  will,"  said  Mathew  happily, "  for 
I  think  the  mountains  know  quite  as  much 
of  the  important  things  as  they  know  here  in 
the  town." 

"  Eight  you  are,"  said  the  charcoal-burner, 


THE  CHRISTMAS  TREE  105 

as  he  clapped  his  boy's  hand  between  both  his 
own,  "  and  I  am  pleased  to  think  you  have 
turned  out  such  a  sensible  little  fellow."  But 
he  really  did  not  know  all  that  was  in  his  son's 
heart. 


THE  FIRE  BKINGER 


THE  FIRE   BRINGER 

THIS  is  one  of  the  stories  that  Alan  had  from 
the  Basket  Woman  after  she  came  to  under- 
stand that  the  boy  really  loved  her  tales  and 
believed  them.  She  would  sit  by  the  spring 
with  her  hands  clasped  across  her  knees  while 
the  clothes  boiled  and  Alan  fed  the  fire  with 
broken  brush,  and  tell  him  wonder  stories  as 
long  as  the  time  allowed,  which  was  never  so 
long  as  the  boy  liked  to  hear  them.  The  story 
of  the  Fire  Bringer  gave  him  the  greatest  de- 
light, and  he  made  a  game  of  it  to  play  with 
little  Indian  boys  from  the  campoodie  who 
sometimes  strayed  in  the  direction  of  the  home- 
steader's cabin.  It  was  the  story  that  came 
oftenest  to  his  mind  when  he  lay  in  his  bed  at 
night,  and  saw  the  stars  in  the  windy  sky  shine 
through  the  cabin  window. 

He  heard  of  it  so  often  and  thought  of  it  so 
much  that  at  last  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had 


110  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

been  part  of  the  story  himself,  but  his  mother 
said  he  must  have  dreamed  it.  The  experience 
came  to  him  in  this  way :  He  had  gone  with 
his  father  to  the  mountains  for  a  load  of  wood, 
a  two  days'  journey  from  home,  and  they  had 
taken  their  blankets  to  sleep  upon  the  ground, 
which  was  the  first  time  of  Alan's  doing  so. 
It  was  the  time  of  year  when  white  gilias, 
which  the  children  call  "  evening  snow,"  were 
in  bloom,  and  their  musky  scent  was  mingled 
with  the  warm  air  in  the  soft  dark  all  about 
him. 

He  heard  the  camp-fire  snap  and  whisper, 
and  saw  the  flicker  of  it  brighten  and  die  on 
the  lower  branches  of  the  pines.  He  looked 
up  and  saw  the  stars  in  the  deep  velvet  void, 
and  now  and  then  one  fell  from  it,  trailing 
all  across  the  sky.  Small  winds  moved  in  the 
tops  of  the  sage  and  trod  lightly  in  the  dark, 
blossomy  grass.  Near  by  them  ran  a  flood- 
ing creek,  the  sound  of  it  among  the  stones 
like  low-toned,  cheerful  talk.  Familiar  voices 
seemed  to  rise  through  it  and  approach  dis- 
tinctness. The  boy  lay  in  his  blanket  hark- 


THE  FIRE  BRINGER  111 

ing  to  one  recurring  note,  until  quite  suddenly 
it  separated  itself  from  the  babble  and  called 
to  him  in  the  Basket  Woman's  voice.  He  was 
sure  it  was  she  who  spoke  his  name,  though 
he  could  not  see  her ;  and  got  up  on  his  feet 
at  once.  He  knew,  too,  that  he  was  Alan,  and 
yet  it  seemed,  without  seeming  strange,  that 
he  was  the  boy  of  the  story  who  was  afterward 
to  be  called  the  Fire  Bringer.  The  skin  of  his 
body  was  dark  and  shining,  with  straight, 
black  locks  cropped  at  his  shoulders,  and  he 
wore  no  clothing  but  a  scrap  of  deerskin  belted 
with  a  wisp  of  bark.  He  ran  free  on  the  mesa 
and  mountain  where  he  would,  and  carried 
in  his  hand  a  cleft  stick  that  had  a  longish 
rounded  stone  caught  in  the  cleft  and  held  by 
strips  of  skin.  By  this  he  knew  he  had  waked 
up  into  the  time  of  which  the  Basket  Woman 
had  told  him,  before  fire  was  brought  to  the 
tribes,  when  men  and  beasts  talked  together 
with  understanding,  and  the  Coyote  was  the 
Friend  and  Counselor  of  man.  They  ranged 
together  by  wood  and  open  swale,  the  boy  who 
was  to  be  called  Fire  Bringer  and  the  keen, 


112  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

gray  dog  of  the  wilderness,  and  saw  the  tribes- 
men catching  fish  in  the  creeks  with  their 
hands  and  the  women  digging  roots  with  sharp 
stones.  This  they  did  in  summer  and  fared 
well,  but  when  winter  came  they  ran  nakedly 
in  the  snow  or  huddled  in  caves  of  the  rocks 
and  were  very  miserable.  When  the  boy  saw 
this  he  was  very  unhappy,  and  brooded  over 
it  until  the  Coyote  noticed  it. 

"  It  is  because  my  people  suffer  and  have  no 
way  to  escape  the  cold,"  said  the  boy. 

"  I  do  not  feel  it,"  said  the  Coyote. 

"  That  is  because  of  your  coat  of  good  fur, 
which  my  people  have  not,  except  they  take  it 
in  the  chase,  and  it  is  hard  to  come  by." 

"  Let  them  run  about,  then,"  said  the  Coun- 
selor, "  and  keep  warm." 

"They  run  till  they  are  weary,"  said  the 
boy,  "  and  there  are  the  young  children  and 
the  very  old.  Is  there  no  way  for  them  ?  " 

"  Come,"  said  the  Coyote,  "  let  us  go  to  the 
hunt." 

"  I  will  hunt  no  more,"  the  boy  answered 
him,  "  until  I  have  found  a  way  to  save  my 


THE  FIRE  BRINGER  113 

people  from  the  cold.  Help  me,  0  Coun- 
selor!" 

But  the  Coyote  had  run  away.  After  a  time 
he  came  back  and  found  the  boy  still  troubled 
in  his  mind. 

"  There  is  a  way,  0  Man  Friend,"  said  the 
Coyote,  "  and  you  and  I  must  take  it  together, 
but  it  is  very  hard." 

"  I  will  not  fail  of  my  part,"  said  the  boy. 

"  We  will  need  a  hundred  men  and  women, 
strong  and  swift  runners." 

"  I  will  find  them,"  the  boy  insisted,  "only 
tell  me." 

"  We  must  go,"  said  the  Coyote,  "  to  the 
Burning  Mountain  by  the  Big  Water  and  bring 
fire  to  your  people." 

Said  the  boy,  "  What  is  fire  ?  " 

Then  the  Coyote  considered  a  long  time  how 
he  should  tell  the  boy  what  fire  is.  "  It  is," 
said  he,  "  red  like  a  flower,  yet  it  is  no  flower ; 
neither  is  it  a  beast,  though  it  runs  in  the  grass 
and  rages  in  the  wood  and  devours  all.  It  is 
very  fierce  and  hurtful  and  stays  not  for  ask- 
ing, yet  if  it  is  kept  among  stones  and  fed  with 


114  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

small  sticks,  it  will  serve  the  people  well  and 
keep  them  warm." 

"  How  is  it  to  be  come  at  ?  " 

"It  has  its  lair  in  the  Burning  Mountain, 
and  the  Fire  Spirits  guard  it  night  and  day. 
It  is  a  hundred  days'  journey  from  this  place, 
and  because  of  the  jealousy  of  the  Fire  Spir- 
its no  man  dare  go  near  it.  But  I,  because 
all  beasts  are  known  to  fear  it  much,  may 
approach  it  without  hurt  and,  it  may  be,  bring 
you  a  brand  from  the  burning.  Then  you 
must  have  strong  runners  for  every  one  of  the 
hundred  days  to  bring  it  safely  home." 

"  I  will  go  and  get  them,"  said  the  boy ;  but 
it  was  not  so  easily  done  as  said.  Many  there 
were  who  were  slothful  and  many  were  afraid, 
but  the  most  disbelieved  it  wholly,  for,  they 
said,  "  How  should  this  boy  tell  us  of  a  thing 
of  which  we  have  never  heard !  "  But  at  the 
last  the  boy  and  their  own  misery  persuaded 
them. 

The  Coyote  advised  them  how  the  march 
should  begin.  The  boy  and  the  Counselor 
went  foremost,  next  to  them  the  swiftest  run- 


THE  FIRE  BRINGER  115 

ners,  with  the  others  following  in  the  order  of 
their  strength  and  speed.  They  left  the  place 
of  their  home  and  went  over  the  high  moun- 
tains where  great  jagged  peaks  stand  up  above 
the  snow,  and  down  the  way  the  streams  led 
through  a  long  stretch  of  giant  wood  where 
the  sombre  shade  and  the  sound  of  the  wind  in 
the  branches  made  them  afraid.  At  nightfall 
where  they  rested  one  stayed  in  that  place,  and 
the  next  night  another  dropped  behind,  and  so 
it  was  at  the  end  of  each  day's  journey.  They 
crossed  a  great  plain  where  waters  of  mirage 
rolled  over  a  cracked  and  parching  earth  and 
the  rim  of  the  world  was  hidden  in  a  bluish 
mist ;  so  they  came  at  last  to  another  range  of 
hills,  not  so  high  but  tumbled  thickly  together, 
and  beyond  these,  at  the  end  of  the  hundred 
days,  to  the  Big  Water  quaking  along  the  sand 
at  the  foot  of  the  Burning  Mountain. 

It  stood  up  in  a  high  and  peaked  cone,  and 
the  smoke  of  its  burning  rolled  out  and  broke 
along  the  sky.  By  night  the  glare  of  it  red- 
dened the  waves  far  out  on  the  Big  Water 
when  the  Fire  Spirits  began  their  dance. 


116  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

Then  said  the  Counselor  to  the  boy  who 
was  soon  to  be  called  the  Fire  Bringer,  "  Do 
you  stay  here  until  I  bring  you  a  brand  from 
the  burning ;  be  ready  and  right  for  running, 
and  lose  no  time,  for  I  shall  be  far  spent 
when  I  come  again,  and  the  Fire  Spirits  will 
pursue  me."  Then  he  went  up  the  mountain, 
and  the  Fire  Spirits  when  they  saw  him  come 
were  laughing  and  very  merry,  for  his  appear- 
ance was  much  against  him.  Lean  he  was, 
and  his  coat  much  the  worse  for  the  long 
way  he  had  come.  Slinking  he  looked,  incon- 
siderable, scurvy,  and  mean,  as  he  has  always 
looked,  and  it  served  him  as  well  then  as  it 
serves  him  now.  So  the  Fire  Spirits  only 
laughed,  and  paid  him  no  farther  heed.  Along 
in  the  night,  when  they  came  out  to  begin  their 
dance  about  the  mountain,  the  Coyote  stole 
the  fire  and  began  to  run  away  with  it  down 
the  slope  of  the  Burning  Mountain.  When 
the  Fire  Spirits  saw  what  he  had  done,  they 
streamed  out  after  him  red  and  angry  in  pur- 
suit, with  a  sound  like  a  swarm  of  bees. 

The  boy  saw  them  come,  and  stood  up  in 


THE  FIRE  BRINGER  117 

his  place  clean  limbed  and  taut  for  run- 
ning. He  saw  the  sparks  of  the  brand  stream 
back  along  the  Coyote's  flanks  as  he  car- 
ried it  in  his  mouth  and  stretched  forward 
on  the  trail,  bright  against  the  dark  bulk  of 
the  mountain  like  a  falling  star.  He  heard 
the  singing  sound  of  the  Fire  Spirits  behind 
and  the  labored  breath  of  the  Counselor 
nearing  through  the  dark.  Then  the  good 
beast  panted  down  beside  him,  and  the  brand 
dropped  from  his  jaws.  The  boy  caught  it 
up,  standing  bent  for  the  running  as  a  bow 
to  speeding  the  arrow;  out  he  shot  on  the 
homeward  path,  and  the  Fire  Spirits  snapped 
and  sung  behind  him.  Fast  as  they  pursued 
he  fled  faster,  until  he  saw  the  next  runner 
stand  up  in  his  place  to  receive  the  brand. 
So  it  passed  from  hand  to  hand,  and  the  Fire 
Spirits  tore  after  it  through  the  scrub  until 
they  came  to  the  mountains  of  the  snows. 
These  they  could  not  pass,  and  the  dark, 
sleek  runners  with  the  backward-streaming 
brand  bore  it  forward,  shining  star-like  in 
the  night,  glowing  red  through  sultry  noons, 


118  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

violet  pale  in  twilight  glooms,  until  they  came 
in  safety  to  their  own  land.  Here  they  kept 
it  among  stones,  and  fed  it  with  small  sticks, 
as  the  Coyote  had  advised,  until  it  warmed 
them  and  cooked  their  food.  As  for  the  boy 
by  whom  fire  came  to  the  tribes,  he  was 
called  the  Fire  Bringer  while  he  lived,  and 
after  that,  since  there  was  no  other  with  so 
good  a  right  to  the  name,  it  fell  to  the 
Coyote ;  and  this  is  the  sign  that  the  tale  is 
true,  for  all  along  his  lean  flanks  the  fur  is 
singed  and  yellow  as  it  was  by  the  flames 
that  blew  backward  from  the  brand  when  he 
brought  it  down  from  the  Burning  Mountain. 
As  for  the  fire,  that  went  on  broadening  and 
brightening  and  giving  out  a  cheery  sound 
until  it  broadened  into  the  light  of  day,  and 
Alan  sat  up  to  hear  it  crackling  under  the 
coffee-pot,  where  his  father  was  cooking  their 
breakfast. 


THE  CROOKED  FIR 


THE  CEOOKED  FIR 

THE  pipsissawa,  which  is  sometimes  called 
prince's  pine,  is  half  as  tall  as  the  wood- 
chuck  that  lives  under  the  brown  boulder; 
and  the  seedling  fir  in  his  first  season  was  as 
tall  as  the  prince's  pine,  so  for  the  time  they 
made  the  most  of  each  other's  company.  The 
woodchuck  and  the  pipsissawa  were  never  to 
be  any  taller,  but  the  silver  fir  was  to  keep 
on  growing  as  long  as  he  stood  in  the  earth 
and  drew  sap.  In  his  second  season,  which 
happened  to  be  a  good  growing  year,  the  fir 
was  as  tall  as  the  woodchuck  and  began  to 
look  about  him. 

The  forest  of  silver  firs  grew  on  a  hill- 
slope  up  from  a  water-course  as  far  as  the 
borders  of  the  long-leaved  pines.  Where  the 
trees  stood  close  together  the  earth  was  brown 
with  the  litter  of  a  thousand  years,  and  little 
gray  hawks  hunted  in  their  green,  windy 


122  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

glooms.  In  the  open  spaces  there  were  thick- 
ets of  meadowsweet,  fireweed,  monkshood, 
and  columbine,  with  saplings  and  seedlings 
in  between.  When  the  fir  which  was  as  tall 
as  the  woodchuck  had  grown  a  year  or  two 
longer,  he  made  a  discovery.  All  the  firs  on 
the  hill-slope  were  crooked!  Their  trunks 
bulged  out  at  the  base  toward  the  downward 
pitch  of  the  hill ;  and  it  is  the  proper  destiny 
of  fir  trees  to  be  straight. 

"  They  should  be  straight,"  said  the  seed- 
ling fir.  "  I  feel  it  in  my  fibres  that  a  fir  tree 
should  be  straight."  He  looked  up  at  the  fir 
mother  very  far  above  him  on  her  way  to  the 
sky,  with  the  sun  and  the  wind  in  her  star- 
built  boughs. 

"  I  shall  be  straight,"  said  the  seedling  fir. 

"  Ah,  do  not  be  too  sure  of  it,"  said  the  fir 
mother.  But  for  all  that  the  seedling  fir  was 
very  sure,  and  when  the  snow  tucked  him  in 
for  the  winter  he  took  a  long  time  to  think 
about  it.  The  snows  are  wonderfully  deep  in 
the  canon  of  the  silver  firs.  From  where  they 
gather  in  the  upper  air  the  fir  mother  shakes 


THE  CROOKED  FIR  123 

them  lightly  down,  packing  so  softly  and  so 
warm  that  the  seedlings  and  the  pipsissawas  do 
not  mind. 

About  the  time  the  fir  had  grown  tall 
enough  to  be  called  a  sapling  he  made  another 
discovery.  The  fir  mother  had  also  a  crooked 
trunk.  The  sapling  was  greatly  shocked;  he 
hardly  liked  to  speak  of  it  to  the  fir  mother. 
He  remembered  his  old  friend  the  pipsissawa, 
but  he  had  so  outgrown  her  that  there  was 
really  no  comfort  in  trying  to  make  himself 
understood,  so  he  spoke  to  the  woodchuck. 
The  woodchuck  was  no  taller  than  he  used  to 
be,  but  when  he  climbed  up  on  the  brown  boul- 
der above  his  house  he  was  on  a  level  with  the 
sapling  fir,  and  though  he  was  not  much  of  a 
talker  he  was  a  great  thinker  and  had  opinions. 

"Really,"  said  the  fir,  "I  hardly  like  to 
speak  of  it,  but  you  are  such  an  old  friend ; 
do  you  see  what  a  crook  the  fir  mother  has  in 
her  trunk  ?  We  firs  you  know  were  intended 
to  be  straight." 

"That,"  said  the  woodchuck,  "is  on  ac- 
count of  the  snow." 


124  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"But,  oh,  my  friend,"  said  the  sapling, 
"you  must  be  mistaken.  The  snow  is  soft 
and  comfortable  and  braces  one  up.  I  ought 
to  know,  for  I  spend  whole  winters  in  it." 

" Grur-r-ru-"  said  the  woodchuck  crossly; 
"  well  for  you  that  you  do,  or  I  should  have 
eaten  you  off  by  now." 

After  this  the  little  fir  kept  his  thoughts  to 
himself ;  he  was  very  much  afraid  of  the  wood- 
chuck,  and  there  is  nothing  a  young  fir  fears  so 
much  as  being  eaten  off  before  it  has  a  chance 
to  bear  cones.  But  in  fact  the  woodchuck 
spent  the  winter  under  the  snow  himself.  He 
went  into  his  house  and  shut  the  door  when 
the  first  feel  of  snow  was  in  the  air,  and  did 
not  come  out  until  green  things  began  to 
grow  in  the  cleared  spaces. 

Not  many  winters  after  that  the  fir  was 
sufficiently  tall  to  hold  the  green  cross,  that 
all  firs  bear  on  their  topmost  bough,  above 
the  snow  most  of  the  winter  through.  Now 
he  began  to  learn  a  great  many  things.  The 
first  of  these  was  about  the  woodchuck. 

"Really  that  fellow  is  a  great  braggart," 


THE  CROOKED  FIR  125 

said  the  fir ;  "I  cannot  think  how  I  came  to 
be  afraid  of  him." 

In  those  days  the  sapling  saw  the  deer 
getting  down  in  the  flurry  of  the  first  snows 
to  the  feeding  grounds  on  the  lower  hills,  saw 
the  mountain  sheep  nodding  their  great  horns 
serenely  in  the  lee  of  a  tall  cliff  through  the 
wildest  storms.  In  the  spring  he  saw  the 
brown  bears  shambling  up  the  trails,  ripping 
the  bark  off  of  dead  trees  to  get  at  the 
worms  and  grubs  that  harbored  there ;  lastly 
he  saw  the  woodchuck  come  out  of  his  hole 
as  if  nothing  had  ever  happened. 

And  now  as  the  winters  came  on,  the  fir 
began  to  feel  the  weight  of  the  snow.  When 
it  was  wet  and  heavy  and  clung  to  its 
branches,  the  little  fir  shivered  and  moaned. 

"  Droop  your  boughs,"  creaked  the  fir 
mother ;  "  droop  them  as  I  do,  and  the  snow 
will  fall." 

So  the  sapling  drooped  his  fan-spread 
branches  until  they  lay  close  to  the  trunk ; 
and  the  snow  wreaths  slipped  away  and  piled 
thickly  about  his  trunk.  But  when  the  snow 


126  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

lay  deep  over  all  the  slope,  it  packed  and  slid 
down  toward  the  ravine  and  pressed  strongly 
against  the  sapling  fir. 

"  Oh,  I  shall  be  torn  from  my  roots,"  he 
cried ;  "  I  shall  be  broken  off.  " 

"  Bend,"  said  the  fir  mother,  "  bend,  and 
you  will  not  break."  So  the  young  fir  bent 
before  the  snow  until  he  was  curved  like  a 
bow,  but  when  the  spring  came  and  the  sap 
ran  in  his  veins,  he  straightened  his  trunk 
anew  and  spread  his  branches  in  a  star- 
shaped  whorl. 

"  After  all,"  said  the  sapling,  "  it  is  not 
such  a  great  matter  to  keep  straight ;  it  only 
requires  an  effort." 

So  he  went  on  drooping  and  bending  to  the 
winter  snows,  growing  strong  and  straight 
with  the  spring,  and  rejoicing.  About  this 
time  the  fir  began  to  feel  a  tingling  in  his 
upper  branches. 

"  Something  is  going  to  happen,"  he  said ; 
something  agreeable  in  fact,  for  the  tree  was 
fifty  years  old,  and  it  was  time  to  grow  cones. 
For  fifty  years  a  silver  fir  has  nothing  to  do 


THE  CROOKED  FIR  127 

but  to  grow  branches,  thrown  out  in  annual 
circles,  every  one  in  the  shape  of  a  cross. 
Then  it  grows  cones  on  the  topmost  whorl, 
royal  purple  and  burnished  gold,  erect  on  the 
ends  of  the  branches  like  Christmas  candles. 
The  sapling  fir  had  only  three  in  his  first 
season  of  bearing,  but  he  was  very  proud  of 
them,  for  now  he  was  no  longer  a  sapling,  but 
a  tree. 

When  one  has  to  devote  the  whole  of  a 
long  season  to  growing  cones,  one  has  not 
much  occasion  to  think  of  other  things.  By 
the  time  there  were  five  rows  of  cone-bearing 
branches  spread  out  broadly  from  the  silver 
fir,  the  woodchuck  made  a  remark  to  the 
pipsissawa  which  is  sometimes  called  prince's 
pine.  It  was  not  the  same  pipsissawa,  nor  the 
same  woodchuck,  but  one  of  his  descendants, 
and  his  parents  had  told  him  the  whole  story. 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  said  he,  "  that  the  fir 
tree  is  not  going  to  be  straight  after  all.  He 
never  seems  to  quite  recover  from  the  winter 
snow." 

"  Ah,"  said  the  pipsissawa,  "  I  have  always 


128  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

thought  it  better  to  have  your  seeds  ripe 
and  put  away  under  ground  before  the  snow 
comes.  Then  you  do  not  mind  it  at  all." 

The  woodchuck  was  right  about  the  fir ; 
his  trunk  was  beginning  to  curve  toward  the 
downward  slope  of  the  hill  with  the  weight 
of  the  drifts.  And  that  went  on  until  the 
curve  was  quite  fixed  in  the  ripened  wood, 
and  the  fir  tree  could  not  have  straightened 
up  if  he  had  wished.  But  to  tell  the  truth, 
the  fir  tree  did  not  wish.  By  the  end  of 
another  fifty  years,  when  he  wagged  his  high 
top  above  the  forest  gloom,  he  grew  to  be 
quite  proud  of  it. 

"  There  is  nothing,"  he  said  to  the  sapling 
firs,  "  like  being  able  to  endure  hard  times 
with  a  good  countenance.  I  have  seen  a 
great  deal  of  life.  There  are  no  such  snows 
now  as  there  used  to  be.  You  can  see  by  the 
curve  of  my  trunk  what  a  weight  I  have 
borne." 

But  the  young  firs  did  not  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  him.  They  had  made  up  their  minds 
to  grow  up  straight. 


THE  SUGAR  PINE 


THE  SUGAR  PINE 

BEFORE  the  sugar  pine  came  up  in  the  meadow 
of  Bright  Water  it  had  swung  a  summer  long 
in  the  burnished  cone  of  the  parent  tree,  until 
the  wind  lifted  it  softly  to  the  earth  where  it 
swelled  with  the  snow  water  and  the  sun,  and 
began  to  grow  into  a  tree.  But  it  knew  nothing 
whatever  of  itself  except  that  it  was  alive  and 
growing ;  and  in  its  first  season  was  hardly 
so  tall  as  the  Little  Grass  of  Parnassus  that 
crowded  the  sod  at  the  Bright  Water.  In  fact, 
it  was  a  number  of  years  before  it  began  to 
overtop  the  meadowsweet,  the  fireweed,  the 
tall  lilies,  the  monkshood,  and  columbine,  and 
under  these  circumstances  it  could  not  be  ex- 
pected to  have  much  of  an  opinion  of  itself. 

During  those  years  the  young  pine  suffered 
a  secret  mortification  because  it  had  no  flowers. 
It  stood  stiff  and  trimly  in  its  plain  dark 
green,  every  needle  like  every  other  one,  and 


132  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

no  honey-gatherer  visited  it.  When  all  the 
meadow  ran  over  with  rosy  and  purple  bloom, 
the  pine  tree  trembled  and  beads  of  clear  resin 
oozed  out  upon  its  bark  like  tears;  and  the 
trouble  really  seemed  worse  than  it  was  because 
everybody  made  so  much  of  it.  Even  the  hum- 
mingbirds as  they  came  hurtling  through  the 
air  would  draw  back  conspicuously  when  they 
came  to  the  pine,  and  though  they  said  politely, 
"  I  beg  your  pardon,  I  took  you  for  a  flower," 
the  seedling  felt  it  would  have  been  better  had 
they  said  nothing  at  all. 

"  Well,  why  don't  you  grow  flowers  ?  "  said 
the  meadowsweet ;  "  it  is  easy  enough.  Just  do 
as  I  do,"  and  she  spread  her  drift  of  blossoms 
like  a  fragrant  snow.  But  the  sugar  pine  found 
it  impossible  to  be  anything  but  stiff  and 
plainly  green,  though  every  year  in  the  stir  and 
tingle  of  new  sap  he  felt  a  promise  of  better 
things. 

"  I  suppose,"  he  said  one  day,  "  I  must  be 
in  some  way  different  from  the  rest  of  you." 

"  Ah,  that  is  the  way  with  you  solemn 
people,"  said  the  fireweed,  "always  ima- 


THE  SUGAR  PINE  133 

gining  yourself  better  than  those  about  you 
to  excuse  your  disagreeableness.  Any  one 
can  see  by  the  way  you  hold  yourself  that 
you  have  too  much  of  an  opinion  of  your- 
self." 

The  little  pine  tree  sighed;  he  had  not 
said  "  better,"  only  "  different,"  and  he  began 
to  realize  year  by  year  that  this  was  so. 

"  You  should  try  to  be  natural,"  said  the 
meadowsweet ;  "  do  not  be  so  stiff,  and  then 
every  one  will  love  you  though  you  are  so 
plain." 

Then  the  sugar  pine  reached  out  and  tried 
to  mingle  with  the  flowers,  but  the  sharp 
needles  tore  their  frills  and  the  stiff  branches 
did  not  suit  with  their  graceful  swaying,  so 
he  was  obliged  to  give  it  up.  It  seemed,  in 
fact,  the  more  he  tried  to  be  like  the  others 
the  worse  he  grew. 

"  If  only  you  were  not  so  odd,"  said  all  the 
flowers.  None  of  the  young  growing  things 
in  the  meadow  understood  that  it  is  natural 
for  a  pine  tree  to  be  stiff. 

The  sugar  pine  was  not  always  unhappy. 


134  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

There  were  days  when  he  caught  golden  glints 
of  the  stream  that  ran  smoothly  about  the 
meadow,  in  a  bed  of  leopard-colored  stones, 
and,  reflecting  all  the  light  that  fell  into  the 
hollow  of  the  hills,  gave  the  place  its  name ; 
days  when  the  air  was  warm  and  the  sky  was 
purely  blue,  and  the  resinous  smell  of  the 
pines  on  the  meadow  border  came  to  the 
seedling  like  a  sweet  savor  in  a  dream,  for  as 
yet  he  did  not  understand  what  he  was  to  be. 
He  was  pleased  just  to  be  looking  at  the  sum- 
mer riot  of  the  flowering  things,  and  loved 
the  cool  softness  of  the  snow  when  he  was 
tucked  into  comfortable  darkness  to  dream  of 
the  spring  odor  of  the  pines.  Then,  when  it 
seemed  that  the  meadow  had  forgotten  him, 
the  little  tree  would  fall  to  thinking  the 
thoughts  proper  to  his  kind,  and  found  the 
time  pass  pleasantly. 

"  I  suppose,"  he  thought,  "  it  is  not  good 
for  me  to  flower  as  the  other  plants.  If  I 
began  like  them  I  should  probably  end  like 
them,  and  I  feel  that  I  could  not  be  satisfied 
with  that.  After  all,  one  should  not  try  to  be 


THE  SUGAR  PINE  135 

so  much  like  others,  but  to  be  the  very  best 
of  one's  own  sort." 

Very  early  the  young  tree  had  noticed  that 
he  was  the  only  one  of  all  that  company  that 
kept  green  and  growing  the  winter  through. 
He  would  have  been  secretly  very  proud  of 
it,  but  the  flowers  took  good  care  to  let 
him  know  their  opinion  of  such  airs. 

"  It  is  simply  that  you  wish  to  be  consid- 
ered peculiar,"  said  the  columbine;  "one 
sees  that  you  like  nothing  so  much  as  to  be 
in  other  people's  mouths,  but  let  me  tell  you, 
you  will  not  get  yourself  any  better  liked 
by  such  behavior."  After  that  the  little  tree 
wished  nothing  so  much  as  that  he  might  be 
the  commonest  summer-flowering  weed. 

"  But  I  am  not,"  he  said  ;  "  no,  I  am  not, 
and  I  would  do  very  well  as  I  am  if  they 
would  let  me  be  happy  in  my  own  way." 

That  summer  the  seedling  grew  as  tall  as 
the  meadowsweet,  and  could  look  across  the 
open  space  to  the  parent  pine  poised  on  her 
noble  shaft,  her  spreading  crown  gathering 
sunshine  from  the  draughts  of  upper  air.  She 


136  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

seemed  to  rock  a  little  as  if  she  dozed  upon 
her  feet,  and  the  great  sweep  of  limbs  with 
pendulous  golden  cones  made  a  gentle  sigh- 
ing. Then  the  despised  little  seedling  felt  a 
thrill  go  through  him,  and  felt  a  shaking  in  all 
his  slender  twigs.  He  bowed  himself  among 
the  lilies,  and  was  both  glad  and  ashamed,  for 
though  he  could  not  well  believe  it,  he  knew 
himself  akin  to  the  great  sugar  pines.  After 
that  he  gave  up  trying  to  be  one  of  the 
flowers.  Once  he  even  ventured  to  speak  of  it 
to  the  meadowsweet. 

"  Well,  if  it  is  any  satisfaction  to  you  to 
think  so;  but  do  not  let  any  one  else  hear 
you  say  that.  You  are  likely  to  get  yourself 
misunderstood.  I  tell  you  this  because  I  am 
your  friend,"  said  the  meadowsweet,  but  really 
she  had  misunderstood  him  herself. 

Then  a  rumor  arose  in  the  neighborhood 
that  the  sombre,  stubborn  shrub  conceited 
himself  to  be  a  pine,  and  the  rumor  ran  with 
laughter  and  nodding  the  length  of  the  meadow 
until  it  reached  the  old  alder  on  the  edge  of 
Bright  Water.  The  alder  had  stood  with  his 


THE   SUGAR  PINE  137 

feet  in  the  stream  for  longer  than  the  meadow- 
sweet could  remember,  and  saw  everything 
that  went  on  by  reflection. 

"Do  not  laugh  too  soon,"  said  the  alder 
tree,  "  I  have  seen  stranger  things  than  that 
happen  in  this  meadow,"  for  he  was  indeed 
very  old. 

"We  have  known  him  a  good  many  sea- 
sons," said  the  fireweed,  "and  he  has  not  done 
anything  worth  mentioning  yet." 

All  this  was  very  hard  for  the  young  pine 
to  bear,  but  there  was  better  coming.  That 
summer  the  forest  ranger  came  riding  in 
Bright  Water  and  a  learned  man  rode  with 
him,  praising  the  flowers  and  counting  the 
numbers  and  varieties  of  bloom.  How  they 
prinked  and  flaunted  in  their  pride ! 

"That  is  all  very  pretty,  as  you  say," 
answered  the  ranger  as  they  came  by  the 
place  of  the  pine,  "  and  I  suppose  they  per- 
form a  sort  of  service  in  keeping  the  soil  cov- 
ered, but  the  trees  are  the  real  strength  of  the 
mountain.  Ah,  here  is  a  seedling  of  the  right 
sort !  I  must  give  that  fellow  a  chance,"  and 


138  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

he  began  pulling  up  great  handfuls  of  the 
blossoming  things  around  the  tree. 

"What  is  it?"  asked  his  companion. 

"  A  sugar  pine,"  he  said  ;  "probably  a  seed- 
ling of  that  splendid  specimen  yonder,"  and 
he  went  on  clearing  the  ground  to  let  in  sun 
and  air. 

"But  you  must  admit,"  said  his  friend, 
"  that  a  seedling  pine  cuts  rather  a  poor 
figure  among  all  this  flare  of  bloom." 

"  Oh,  you  wait  fifty  or  sixty  years,"  said 
the  ranger,  "  and  then  you  will  see  what  sort 
of  a  figure  it  makes.  It  really  takes  a  pine  of 
this  sort  a  couple  of  hundred  years  to  reach 
its  prime,"  and  they  rode  talking  up  the  trail. 

Word  of  what  had  happened  was  carried 
all  about  the  meadow  and  made  a  great  stir. 
When  it  came  to  the  alder  tree  he  wagged 
his  old  head.  "  Ah,  well,"  he  said,  "  I  told 
you  so." 

"  I  will  not  believe  it  until  I  see  it,"  said 
the  fireweed. 

"  They  might  have  known  it  before,"  sighed 
the  young  pine,  "  and  they  ought  to  be  proud 


THE  SUGAR  PINE  139 

to  think  I  grew  up  in  the  same  meadow  with 
them." 

But  they  were  not ;  they  went  on  flaunting 
their  blossoms  as  if  nothing  had  occurred, 
and  the  young  tree  grew  up  as  he  was  meant 
to  be,  and  the  pines  on  the  meadow  border 
sent  him  greeting  on  the  wind.  He  still  kept 
his  trim  spire-shaped  habit,  but  he  could  very 
well  put  up  with  that  for  the  time  being.  He 
felt  within  himself  the  promise  of  what  he  was 
to  be.  After  fifty  or  sixty  years,  as  the  ranger 
had  said,  he  began  to  put  out  strong  cone- 
bearing  boughs  that  shaped  themselves  by 
the  storms  and  the  wind  in  sweeping,  grace- 
ful lines,  and  spread  out  to  shelter  the  horde 
of  flowering  things  below.  Squirrels  ran  up 
the  trunk  and  whistled  cheerily  in  his  windy 
top. 

"  He  grew  here  in  our  neighborhood,"  said 
the  tall  lilies ;  "  we  knew  him  when  he  was  a 
seedling  sprig,  and  now  he  is  the  tallest  of  the 
pines." 

"  Suppose  he  is,"  said  the  fireweed.  "What 
is  the  good  of  a  pine  tree  anyway  ?  " 


140  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

But  the  sugar  pine  did  not  hear.  He  had 
grown  far  above  the  small  folk  of  the  meadow, 
and  went  on  growing  for  a  hundred  years.  He 
gathered  the  sun  in  his  high  branches  and 
rocked  upon  his  shaft.  He  talked  gently  in 
his  own  fashion  with  his  own  kind. 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE 

A  LITTLE  way  up  from  the  trail  that  goes 
toward  Rex  Monte,  not  far  from  the  limit  of 
deep  snows,  there  is  what  looks  to  be  a  round 
dark  hole  in  the  side  of  the  mountain.  It 
is  really  the  ruined  tunnel  of  an  old  mine. 
Formerly  a  house  stood  on  the  ore  dump  at 
one  side  of  the  tunnel,  a  little  unpainted  cabin 
of  pine ;  but  a  great  avalanche  of  snow  and 
stones  carried  them,  both  the  house  and  the 
dump,  away.  The  cabin  was  built  and  owned 
by  a  solitary  miner  called  Jerry,  and  whether 
he  ever  had  any  other  name  no  one  in  the 
town  below  Kearsarge  now  remembers. 

Jerry  was  old  and  lean,  and  his  hair,  which 
had  been  dark  when  he  was  young,  was  now 
bleached  to  the  color  of  the  iron-rusted  rocks 
about  his  mine.  For  thirty  years  he  had  pros- 
pected and  mined  through  that  country  from 
Kearsarge  to  the  Coso  Hills,  but  always  in 


144  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

the  pay  of  other  men,  and  at  last  he  had  hit 
upon  this  ledge  on  Rex  Monte.  To  all  who 
looked,  it  showed  a  very  slender  vein  between 
the  walls  of  country  rock,  and  the  ore  of  so 
poor  a  quality  that  with  all  his  labor  he  could 
do  no  more  than  keep  alive ;  but  to  all  who 
listened,  Jerry  could  tell  a  remarkable  story 
of  what  it  had  been,  and  what  he  expected  it 
to  be.  Very  many  years  ago  he  had  discov- 
ered it  at  the  end  of  a  long  prospect,  when  he 
was  tired  and  quite  discouraged  for  that  time. 
There  was  not  much  passing  then  on  the  Rex 
Monte,  and  Jerry  drew  out  of  the  trail  here 
in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  to  rest  in  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock.  So  while  he  lay 
there  very  weary,  between  sleeping  and  wak- 
ing, he  gazed  out  along  the  ground,  which  was 
ah1  strewn  with  rubble  between  the  stiff,  scant 
grass.  As  he  looked  it  seemed  that  certain 
bits  of  broken  stone  picked  themselves  out  of 
the  heap,  and  grew  larger,  in  some  way  more 
conspicuous,  until,  Jerry  averred,  they  winked 
at  him.  Then  he  reached  out  to  draw  them 
in  with  his  hand,  and  saw  that  they  were  all 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  145 

besprinkled  with  threads  and  specks  of  gold. 
You  may  guess  that  Jerry  was  glad,  then 
that  he  sprang  up  and  began  to  search  for 
more  stones,  and  so  found  a  trail  of  them,  and 
followed  it  through  the  grass  stems  and  the 
heather  until  he  came  to  the  ledge  cropping 
out  by  a  dike  of  weathered  rocks.  And  in 
those  days  the  ledge  was  ah,  so  rich  !  Now  it 
seemed  that  Jerry  was  to  have  a  mine  of  his 
own.  So  he  named  it  the  Golden  Fortune,  and 
told  no  man  what  he  had  found,  but  went 
down  to  the  town  which  lies  in  a  swale  at  the 
foot  of  Kearsarge,  and  brought  back  as  much 
as  was  needful  for  working  the  mine  in  a  sim- 
ple way. 

It  was  nearing  the  end  of  the  summer, 
when  the  hills  expect  the  long  thunder  and 
drumming  rain,  and,  not  many  weeks  after 
that,  the  quiet  storms  that  bring  the  snow. 
Jerry  had  enough  to  do  to  make  all  safe  and 
comfortable  at  the  Golden  Fortune  before 
winter  set  in.  It  was  too  steep  here  on  the 
hill-slope  for  the  deep  snows  to  trouble  him 
much,  so  he  built  his  cabin  against  the  rock, 


146  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

with  a  covered  way  from  it  to  the  tunnel  of 
the  mine,  that  he  might  work  on  all  winter  at 
no  unease  because  of  storms. 

It  was  perhaps  a  month  later,  with  Jerry 
as  busy  as  any  of  the  wild  folk  thereabout, 
and  the  nights  turning  off  bitter  cold  with 
frost.  Of  mornings  he  could  hear  the  thin 
tinkle  of  the  streams  along  fringes  of  delicate 
ice.  It  was  the  afternoon  of  a  day  that  fell 
warm  and  dry  with  a  promise  of  snow  in  the 
air.  Jerry  was  roofing  in  his  cabin,  so  intent 
that  a  voice  hailed  him  before  he  was  aware 
that  there  was  a  man  on  the  trail.  Jerry  knew 
at  once  by  his  dress  and  his  speech  that  he 
was  a  stranger  in  those  parts,  and  he  saw  that 
he  was  not  very  well  prepared  for  the  moun- 
tain passes  and  the  night.  He  knew  this, 
I  say,  with  the  back  of  his  mind,  but  took 
no  note  of  it,  for  he  was  so  occupied  with 
his  house  and  his  mine.  He  suffered  a  fear  to 
have  any  man  know  of  his  good  fortune  lest 
it  should  somehow  slip  away  from  him.  So 
when  the  stranger  asked  him  some  questions 
of  the  trail,  it  seemed  that  what  Jerry  most 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  147 

•wished  was  to  get  rid  of  him  as  quickly  as 
possible.  He  was  a  young  man,  ruddy  and 
blue-eyed,  and  a  foreigner,  what  was  called  in 
careless  miners'  talk,  "  some  kind  of  a  Dutch- 
man," and  could  not  make  himself  well  under- 
stood. Jerry  gathered  that  he  desired  to  know 
if  he  were  headed  right  for  the  trail  that 
went  over  to  the  Bighorn  Mine,  where  he  had 
the  promise  of  work.  So  they  nodded  and 
shrugged,  and  Jerry  made  assurance  with  his 
hands,  as  much  as  to  say,  it  is  no  great 
way ;  and  when  the  young  man  had  looked 
wistfully  at  the  cabin  and  the  boding  sky, 
he  moved  slowly  up  the  trail.  When  he  came 
to  the  turn  where  it  goes  toward  Rex  Monte, 
he  lingered  on  the  ridge  to  wave  good-by,  so 
Jerry  waved  again,  and  the  man  dropped  out 
of  sight.  At  that  moment  the  sun  failed 
behind  a  long  gray  film  that  deepened  and 
spread  over  all  that  quarter  of  the  sky. 

Jerry  had  cause  to  remember  the  stranger 
in  the  night  and  fret  for  him,  for  the  wind 
came  up  and  began  to  seek  in  the  canon, 
and  the  snow  fell  slanting  down.  It  fell  three 


148  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

days  and  nights.  All  that  while  the  gray  veil 
hung  about  Jerry's  house ;  now  and  then  the 
wind  would  scoop  a  great  lane  in  it  to  show 
how  the  drifts  lay  on  the  heather,  then  shut 
in  tight  and  dim  with  a  soft,  weary  sound, 
and  Jerry,  though  he  worked  on  the  Golden 
Fortune,  could  not  get  the  young  stranger 
out  of  his  mind. 

When  the  sun  and  the  frost  had  made  a 
crust  over  the  snow  able  to  bear  up  a  man, 
he  went  over  the  Pass  to  Bighorn  to  inquire  if 
the  stranger  had  come  in,  though  he  did  not 
tell  at  that  time,  nor  until  long  after,  how  late 
it  was  when  the  man  passed  his  cabin,  how 
wistfully  he  turned  away,  nor  what  promise 
was  in  the  air.  The  snow  lay  all  about  the 
Pass,  lightly  on  the  pines,  deeply  in  the  hol- 
lows, so  deeply  that  a  man  might  lie  under  it 
and  no  one  be  the  wiser.  And  there  it  seemed 
the  stranger  must  be,  for  at  the  Bighorn  they 
had  not  heard  of  him,  but  if  he  were  under 
the  snow,  there  he  must  lie  until  the  spring 
thaw.  Of  whatever  happened  to  him,  Jerry 
saw  that  he  must  bear  the  blame,  for,  by  his 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  149 

own  account,  from  that  day  the  luck  vanished 
from  the  Golden  Fortune ;  not  that  the  ore 
dwindled  or  grew  less,  but  there  were  no 
more  of  the  golden  specks.  With  all  he  could 
do  after  that,  Jerry  could  not  maintain  himself 
in  the  cabin  on  the  slope  of  Rex  Monte.  So 
it  came  about  that  the  door  was  often  shut, 
and  the  picks  rusted  in  the  tunnel  of  the 
Golden  Fortune  for  months  together,  while 
Jerry  was  off  earning  wages  in  more  pros- 
perous mines. 

All  his  days  Jerry  could  not  quite  get  his 
mind  away  from  the  earlier  promise  of  the 
mine,  and  as  often  as  he  thought  of  that  he 
thought  of  the  stranger  whom  he  had  sent 
over  the  trail  on  the  evening  of  the  storm. 
Gradually  it  came  into  his  mind  in  a  confused 
way  that  the  two  things  were  mysteriously 
connected,  that  he  had  sent  away  his  luck 
with  the  stranger  into  the  deep  snow.  For  cer- 
tainly Jerry  held  himself  accountable,  and  in 
that  country  between  Kearsarge  and  the  Coso 
Hills  to  be  inhospitable  is  the  worst  offense. 

Every  year  or  so  he  came  back  to  the  mine 


150  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

to  work  a  little,  and  sometimes  it  seemed  to 
promise  better  and  sometimes  not.  Finally, 
Jerry  argued  that  the  luck  would  not  come 
back  to  it  until  he  had  made  good  to  some 
other  man  the  damage  he  had  done  to  one. 
This  set  him  looking  for  an  opportunity. 
Jerry  mentioned  his  belief  so  often  that  he 
came  at  last,  as  is  the  way  of  miners,  to 
accept  it  as  a  thing  prophesied  of  old  time. 
Afterward,  when  he  grew  old  himself,  and 
came  to  live  out  his  life  at  the  Golden  For- 
tune, he  would  be  always  looking  along  the 
trail  at  evening  time  for  passers-by,  and  never 
one  was  allowed  to  go  on  who  could  by  any 
possibility  be  persuaded  to  stay  the  night  in 
Jerry's  cabin.  Often  when  there  was  a  wind, 
and  the  snow  came  slanting  down,  Jerry  fan- 
cied he  heard  one  shouting  in  the  drift ;  then 
he  would  light  a  lantern  and  sally  forth  into 
the  storm,  peering  and  crying. 

About  that  time,  when  he  went  down  into 
the  town  below  Kearsarge  once  in  a  month  or 
so  for  supplies,  the  people  smiled  and  wagged 
their  heads,  but  Jerry  conceived  that  they 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  151 

whispered  together  about  the  unkindness  he 
had  done  to  the  stranger  so  many  years  gone, 
and  he  grew  shyer  and  went  less  often  among 
men.  So  he  companioned  more  with  the  wild 
things,  and  burrowed  deeper  into  the  hill. 
His  cabin  weathered  to  a  semblance  of  the 
stones,  rabbits  ran  in  and  out  at  the  door, 
and  deer  drank  at  his  spring. 

From  the  slope  where  the  cabin  stood,  the 
trail,  which  led  up  from  the  town,  winding 
with  the  winding  of  the  canon,  went  over  the 
Pass,  and  so  into  a  region  of  high  meadows 
and  high,  keen  peaks,  the  feeding-ground  of 
deer  and  mountain  sheep.  The  ravine  of  Rex 
Monte  was  the  easiest  going  from  the  high 
valleys  to  the  foothills,  where  all  winter  the 
feed  kept  green.  Every  year  Jerry  marked  the 
trooping  of  the  wild  kindred  to  the  foothill 
pastures  when  the  snow  lay  heavily  on  all  the 
higher  land,  and  saw  their  returning  when 
the  spring  pressed  hard  upon  the  borders  of 
the  melting  drifts.  So,  as  he  grew  older  and 
stayed  closer  by  his  mine,  Jerry  learned  to 
look  to  the  furred  and  feathered  folk  for  news 


. 


152  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

of  how  the  seasons  fared,  and  what  was  doing 
on  the  high  ridges.  When  the  grouse  and 
quail  went  down,  it  was  a  sign  that  the  snow 
had  covered  the  grass  and  small  seed-bearing 
herbs ;  the  passing  of  deer  —  shapely  bulks  in 
a  mist  of  cloud  —  was  a  portent  of  deep  drifts 
over  the  buckthorn  and  the  heather.  Lastly, 
if  he  saw  the  light  fleeting  of  the  mountain 
sheep,  he  looked  for  wild  and  bitter  work  on 
the  crest  of  Kearsarge  and  Rex  Monte.  It  was 
mostly  at  such  times  that  Jerry  heard  voices 
in  the  storm,  and  he  would  go  stumbling 
about  with  his  lantern  into  the  swirl  of  fall- 
ing snow,  until  the  wind  that  played  up  and 
down  the  great  canon,  like  the  draughts  in  a 
chimney,  made  his  very  bones  a-cold.  Then 
he  would  creep  back  to  drowse  by  the  warmth 
of  his  fire  and  dream  that  the  blue-eyed  stran- 
ger had  come  back  and  brought  the  luck  of 
the  Golden  Fortune.  So  he  passed  the  years 
until  the  winter  of  the  Big  Snow.  It  was  so 
called  many  winters  after,  for  no  other  like  it 
ever  fell  on  the  east  slope  of  Kearsarge. 
It  came  early  in  the  season,  following  a 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  153 

week  of  warm  weather,  when  the  sky  was  full 
of  a  dry  mist  that  showed  ghostly  gray  against 
the  sun  and  the  moon  ;  great  bodies  of  tem- 
perate air  moved  about  the  pines  with  a  sound 
of  moaning  and  distress.  The  deer,  warned 
by  their  wild  sense,  went  down  before  ever  a 
flake  fell,  and  Jerry,  watching,  shivered  in 
sympathy,  recalling  that  so  they  had  run  to- 
gether, and  such  a  spell  of  warm  weather  had 
gone  before  a  certain  snow,  years  ago  before 
the  luck  departed  from  the  Golden  Fortune. 
As  the  fume  of  the  storm  closed  in  about  the 
cabin,  and  flakes  began  to  form  lightly  in  the 
middle  air,  the  old  man's  wits  began  to  fumble 
among  remembrances  of  the  stranger  on  the 
trail,  and  he  would  hearken  for  voices.  The 
snow  began,  then  increased,  and  fell  steadily, 
wet  and  blinding. 

The  third  night  of  its  falling  Jerry  waked 
out  of  a  doze  to  hear  his  name  shouted,  muf- 
fled and  feebly,  through  the  drift.  So  it 
seemed  to  him,  and  he  made  haste  to  answer 
it.  There  was  no  wind;  on  the  very  steep 
slope  where  the  cabin  stood  was  a  knee-deep 


154  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

level,  soft  and  clogging;  in  the  hollows  it 
piled  halfway  up  the  pines.  Jerry's  lantern 
threw  a  faint  and  stifled  gleam.  There  was  no 
further  cry,  but  something  struggled  on  the 
trail  below  him ;  dim,  unhuman  shapes  wres- 
tled in  the  smother  of  the  snow.  Jerry  sent 
them  a  hail  of  assurance  cut  off  short  by  the 
white  wall  of  the  storm. 

There  was  a  little  sag  in  the  hill-front  where 
the  trail  turned  off  to  the  cabin,  and  here 
the  moist  snow  fell  in  a  lake,  into  which  the 
trail  ran  like  a  spit,  and  was  lost.  Down 
this  trail  at  the  last  fierce  •  end  of  the  storm 
came  the  great  wild  sheep,  the  bighorn,  the 
heaviest-headed,  lightest-footed,  winter-proof 
sheep  of  the  mountains  that  God  shepherds 
on  the  high  battlements  of  the  hills.  Down 
they  came  when  there  was  no  meadow,  nor 
thicket,  nor  any  smallest  twig  of  heather  left 
uncovered  on  the  highlands,  and  took  the  lake 
of  soggy  snow  by  Jerry's  cabin  in  the  dark. 
They  had  come  far  under  the  weight  of  the 
great  curved  horns  through  the  clogging 
drifts.  Here  where  the  trail  failed  in  the  white 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  155 

smudge  they  found  no  footing,  floundered 
at  large,  sinking  belly-deep  where  they  stood, 
and  not  daring  to  stand  lest  they  sink  deeper. 
If  any  cry  of  theirs,  hoarse  and  broken,  had 
reached  old  Jerry's  dreaming,  they  spent  no 
further  breath  on  it.  By  something  the  same 
sense  that  made  him  aware  of  their  need, 
Jerry  understood  rather  than  saw  them  strain 
through  the  falling  veil  of  snow.  It  was  a 
sharp  struggle  without  sound  as  they  won  out 
of  the  wet  drift  to  the  firmer  ground.  They 
went  on  like  shadows  pursued  by  the  ghost 
of  a  light  that  wavered  with  the  old  man's 
wavering  feet.  It  was  no  night  for  a  man  to 
be  abroad  in,  but  Jerry  plowed  on  in  the 
drift  till  he  found  the  work  that  was  cut  out 
for  him.  There  where  the  snow  was  deepest, 
yielding  like  wool,  he  found  the  oldest  wether 
of  the  flock,  sunk  to  the  shoulders,  too  feeble 
for  the  struggle,  and  still  too  noble  for  com- 
plaining. How  many  years  had  Jerry  waited 
to  do  a  good  turn  on  the  trail  where  he  had 
done  his  worst :  and  in  all  these  years  he  had 
lost  the  sense  of  distinction  which  should  be 


156  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

between  man  and  beast.  He  put  his  shoulder 
under  the  fore  shoulder  of  the  sheep,  where  he 
could  feel  the  heart  pound  with  certain  fear. 

Jerry  knew  the  trail,  as  he  knew  the  floor 
of  his  mine,  by  the  feel  of  the  ground  under 
him,  so  as  he  heaved  and  guided  with  his 
shoulder,  the  great  ram  grew  quieter  and  lent 
himself  to  the  effort  till  they  came  clear  of  the 
swale,  and  the  sweat  ran  down  from  Jerry's 
forehead.  But  the  bighorn  could  do  no  more. 
In  the  soft  fleece  of  the  snow  he  stood  cowed 
and  trembling.  The  snow  came  on  faster,  and 
wiped  out  the  trail  of  the  flock;  he  made 
no  motion  to  go  after.  Such  a  death  comes  to 
the  wild  sheep  of  the  mountains  often  enough  : 
to  fail  from  old  age  in  some  sudden  storm,  to 
sink  in  the  loose  snow  and  await  the  quest  of 
the  wolf,  or  the  colder  mercy  of  the  drift.  He 
turned  his  back  to  the  storm  which  began  to 
slant  a  little  with  the  rising  wind,  and  looked 
not  once  at  Jerry  nor  at  the  hills  where  he  had 
been  bred.  But  Jerry  cast  his  eye  upon  the 
sheep,  which  was  full  heavier  then  than  he,  and 
then  up  at  the  steep  where  his  cabin  stood, 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  157 

remembering  that  he  had  nothing  there  that 
might  serve  a  sheep  for  food.  Then  he  bent 
down  again,  and  by  dint  of  pulling  and  push- 
ing, and  by  a  dim  sense  that  began  to  filter 
through  the  man's  brain  to  the  beast,  they 
made  some  progress  on  the  trail.  They  went 
over  broken  boulders  and  floundered  in  the 
drifts,  where  Jerry  half  carried  the  sheep  and 
was  half  borne  up  and  supported  by  the  spread 
of  the  great  horns.  They  crossed  Pine  Creek, 
which  ran  dumbly  under  the  snow,  housed 
over  by  the  stream  tangle.  The  flakes  hissed 
softly  on  Jerry's  lantern  and  struck  blindingly 
on  his  eyes,  but  ever  as  they  went  the  sheep 
was  eased  of  his  labor,  grew  assured,  and 
carried  himself  courageously.  Finally  they 
came  where  the  storm  thinned  out,  and  whole 
hill-slopes  covered  with  buckthorn  and  cherry 
warded  off  the  snow  by  springy  arches,  and 
Jerry  drew  up  to  rest  under  a  long-leaved  pine 
while  the  sheep  went  on  alone,  nodding  his 
great  horns  under  the  branches  of  the  scrub. 
He  neither  lingered  nor  looked  back,  and  met 
the  new  chance  of  life  with  as  much  quietness 


158  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

as  the  chance  of  death.  Jerry  was  worn  and 
weary,  and  there  was  a  singing  in  his  brain. 
The  pine  trees  broke  the  wind  and  shed  off 
the  snow  in  curling  wreaths.  It  seemed  to  the 
old  man  most  good  to  rest,  and  he  drowsed 
upon  his  feet. 

"  If  I  sleep  I  shall  freeze,"  he  said ;  and  it 
seemed  on  the  whole  a  pleasant  thing  to  do. 
So  it  went  on  for  a  little  space ;  then  there 
came  a  shape  out  of  the  dark,  a  hand  shook 
him  by  the  shoulder,  and  a  voice  called  him 
by  name.  Then  he  started  out  of  dreaming 
as  he  had  started  at  that  other  call  an  hour  ago, 
and  it  seemed  not  strange  to  him,  the  night, 
nor  the  storm,  nor  the  face  of  the  blue-eyed 
man  that  shone  out  of  the  dark,  but  whether 
by  the  light  of  his  lantern  he  could  not  tell. 
He  shook  the  snow  from  his  shoulders. 

"I  have  expected  you  long,"  he  said. 

"  And  now  I  have  come,"  said  the  stranger 
and  smiled. 

"  Have  you  brought  the  luck  again  ?  " 

"  Come  and  see,"  said  the  man. 

Then  Jerry  took  his  hand  and  leaned  upon 


THE  GOLDEN  FORTUNE  159 

him,  and  together  they  went  up  the  trail  be- 
tween the  drifts. 

"  You  bear  me  no  ill-will  for  what  I  did? " 
said  Jerry. 

And  the  stranger  answered,  "  None." 

"I  have  wished  it  undone  many  times," 
said  the  old  man.  "  I  have  tried  this  night  to 
repay  it." 

"  By  what  you  have  done  this  night  I  am 
repaid,"  said  the  stranger. 

"  It  was  only  a  sheep." 

"  It  was  one  of  God's  creatures,"  said  the 
man. 

So  they  went  on  up  the  trail,  and  it  seemed 
sometimes  to  Jerry  that  he  wandered  alone  in 
the  dark,  that  he  was  cold,  and  his  lantern  had 
gone  out ;  and  again  he  would  hear  the  stranger 
comfort  and  encourage  him.  At  last  they  came 
toward  the  cabin,  and  saw  the  light  stream  out 
of  the  window  and  the  fire  leap  in  the  stove. 
Then  Jerry  thought  of  the  mine,  and  that  the 
stranger  had  brought  back  the  luck  again.  It 
seemed  that  the  young  man  had  promised  him 
this,  though  he  could  not  be  sure  of  that,  nor 


160  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

very  clear  in  his  mind  on  any  point  except  that 
he  had  come  home  again.  But  as  he  drew  near, 
it  seemed  a  brightness  came  out  of  the  tunnel 
of  the  mine,  a  warmth  and  a  great  light.  As  he 
came  into  it  tremblingly,  he  saw  that  the  light 
came  from  the  walls,  and  from  the  lode  at  the  far 
end  of  it,  and  it  was  the  brightness  of  pure  gold. 
And  Jerry  smiled  and  stretched  out  his  arms  to 
it,  making  sure  that  the  luck  had  come  again. 

After  the  week  of  the  Big  Snow  there  were 
people  in  the  town  who  remembered  Jerry,  and 
wondered  how  he  fared.  So  when  the  snow 
had  a  crust  over  it,  they  came  up  by  the  windy 
canon  and  sought  him  in  his  house,  where  the 
door  stood  open  and  a  charred  wick  flared  fee- 
bly in  the  lamp,  and  in  his  mine,  where  they 
found  him  at  the  far  end  of  the  tunnel,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  he  slept  and  smiled. 

"  It  is  a  worthless  lode,"  they  said,  "  but  he 
loved  it." 

So  they  took  powder  and  made  a  blast,  and 
with  it  a  great  heap  of  stones,  shutting  off  the 
end  of  the  tunnel  from  the  outer  air,  and  so  left 
him  with  his  luck  and  the  Golden  Fortune. 


THE  WHITE-BARKED  PINE 


THE  WHITE-BARKED  PINE 

THE  white-barked  pine  grew  on  the  slope  of 
Kearsarge  highest  up  of  all  the  pines,  so  high 
that  nothing  grew  above  it  but  brown  tufts  of 
grass  and  the  rosy  Sierra  primroses  that  shel- 
ter under  the  edges  of  broken  boulders.  The 
white-barked  pines  are  squat  and  short,  trunks 
creeping  along  the  rocks,  and  foliage  all  matted 
in  a  close  green  thatch  by  the  winter's  weight. 
Snow  lies  on  the  slope  of  Kearsarge  eight 
months  in  the  year,  deep  and  smooth  over  the 
pines  and  the  jagged  rocks;  other  months 
there  are  great  storms  of  rain,  and  always  a 
strong  wind  roaring  through  the  Pass,  so  that, 
try  as  it  might,  no  tree  could  stand  erect  on 
those  heights.  The  white-barked  pine  stretched 
its  body  along  the  ground,  and  though  it  was 
four  hundred  years  old,  it  was  no  thicker  than 
a  man's  leg,  and  its  young  branches  of  seventy- 
five  or  a  hundred  years  were  still  so  supple 


164  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

that  one  could  tie  knots  in  them.  It  grew 
near  the  trail,  which  here  crossed  through 
a  gap  in  the  crest  of  the  range  and  straggled 
on  down  the  other  side  of  the  mountain. 

Along  this  trail  went  many  strange  things 
in  their  season.  Early  in  the  year,  before  the 
snow  had  melted  at  all  on  the  high  places, 
went  a  great  lumbering  bear  that  had  a  lair 
above  Big  Meadows,  going  down  to  the  calf- 
pens  and  pig-sties  of  the  town  at  the  foot  of 
Kearsarge.  He  ranged  back  and  forth  on  these 
little  excursions  of  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  in 
the  hungry  season  of  the  year,  and  sometimes 
there  were  hunters  on  his  trail  with  dogs  and 
guns,  but  nothing  ever  came  of  it.  When  the 
trail  began  to  run  a  rivulet  from  the  drip  of 
melting  snow  banks,  the  forest  ranger  went  up 
the  Pass,  singing  as  he  went  and  beating  his 
arms  to  keep  himself  warm.  Afterwards  when 
the  snow  water  was  all  drained  off,  he  came 
back  and  mended  the  trail.  All  through  the 
summer  there  would  be  parties  of  miners  and 
hunters  with  long  strings  of  pack  mules,  go- 
ing over  Kearsarge  to  camp  in  Big  Meadows 


THE   WHITE-BARKED  PINE  165 

or  on  the  fork  of  King's  River.  Sometimes 
there  were  parties  of  Indians  with  women 
and  children,  making  very  merry  with  berries, 
fish,  and  deer  meat.  Nearly  always,  whatever 
went  over  the  mountain  came  back  again,  and 
the  white  pine  noticed  that  the  same  people 
came  again  another  season.  In  four  hundred 
years  one  has  space  for  observation  and  reflec- 
tion. Gradually  the  pine  tree  grew  into  the 
conviction  that  the  other  side  of  the  mountain 
must  be  much  finer  than  this. 

"  Else  why,"  said  he, "  should  so  many  people 
go  there  every  year  ?  " 

It  was  very  fine,  you  may  be  sure,  on  the 
white  pine's  side,  but  the  tree  had  known  it  all 
for  so  many  years,  it  no  longer  pleased  him. 
From  where  he  grew  he  looked  down  between 
the  ridges  on  a  great  winding  canon  full  of 
singing  trees,  with  blue  lakes  like  eyes  winking 
between  them.  He  could  watch  in  the  open 
places  the  white  feet  of  the  water  on  its  way  to 
the  valley,  and  from  the  falls  long  rainbows  of 
spray  blown  out  as  if  they  were  blowing  kisses 
to  the  white-barked  pine.  Below  all  this  lay  the 


166  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

valley,  hollow  like  a  cup,  full  of  fawn-colored 
and  violet  mist,  and  the  farms  and  orchards  lay 
like  dregs  at  the  bottom  of  the  cup.  Beyond 
the  valley  rose  other  noble  ranges  with  cloud 
shadows  playing  all  along  their  slopes. 

"  It  is  very  tiresome  to  look  at  the  same  things 
for  four  hundred  years,"  said  the  white-barked 
pine.  "  If  I  could  only  get  to  the  top,  now.  Do 
tell  me,  what  is  it  like  on  the  other  side  ?  "  he 
said  to  the  wind. 

"  Oh  ! "  said  the  wind,  "  it  rains  and  snows. 
There  are  trees  and  bushes  and  blue  lakes.  It 
is  not  at  all  different  from  this  side." 

A  deer  said  the  same  thing  when  it  slept 
one  night  under  the  thatch  of  the  highest  pine. 
"  It  is  all  meadows  and  hills,  only  sometimes 
the  grass  is  not  so  good  there,  and  again  some- 
times it  is  better.  It  is  very  much  like  this." 

"  I  do  not  believe  them,"  said  the  pine  to 
himself.  "  They  are  simply  trying  to  console 
me  for  not  realizing  my  ambition.  But  I 
am  not  a  sapling  any  longer,  let  me  tell  you 
that." 

"  At  least,"  said  a  young  tree  that  grew  a 


THE   WHITE-BARKED  PINE  167 

little  farther  down,  "  you  are  higher  up  than 
any  of  us." 

"  Of  what  use  is  that  if  I  do  not  get  to  the 
top  ? "  said  the  unhappy  pine.  "  There  is  a 
bunch  of  blue  flowers  there,  I  can  see  it  quite 
plainly  just  where  the  trail  dips  over  the  ridge. 
Surely  I  am  as  capable  of  climbing  as  any  blue 
weed." 

"  But,"  said  the  young  pine,  "  weeds  do  not 
have  to  grow  cones." 

"  Oh,  as  for  cones,"  cried  the  tree  quite 
crossly,  "the  seasons  are  so  short  I  hardly 
ever  ripen  any,  and  if  I  do  the  squirrels  get 
them.  I  do  believe  I  have  not  started  a  seed- 
ling these  two  hundred  years.  It  is  no  use  to 
talk  to  me,  I  shall  be  happy  only  when  I  have 
seen  the  other  side  of  the  mountain." 

It  seems  what  one  desires  with  all  one's  heart 
for  a  long  time  finally  comes  to  pass  in  some 
fashion  or  other.  That  very  season  the  white- 
barked  pine  went  up  over  Kearsarge  to  the 
other  side.  Early  in  the  summer,  when  the 
rosy  primroses  had  just  begun  to  blow  beside 
the  drifts  that  hugged  the  shade  of  the  boul- 


168  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

ders,  a  party  of  miners  went  up  the  trail  with 
a  long  string  of  pack  mules  burdened  with 
picks  and  shovels,  flour  and  potatoes,  and  other 
things  that  miners  use.  The  last  pull  up  the 
Kearsarge  trail  is  the  hardest,  over  a  steep 
waste  of  loose  stones  that  want  very  little 
encouragement  to  go  roaring  down  as  an 
avalanche  into  the  ravine  below.  The  miners 
shouted,  the  mules  scrambled  and  panted  on 
the  steep,  but  just  as  they  came  by  the  last 
of  the  white-barked  pines,  one  slipped  and 
went  rolling  over  and  over  on  the  jagged 
stones.  As  happens  very  frequently  when  a 
pack  animal  falls,  the  mule  was  not  very  much 
hurt,  but  the  pack  saddle  was  quite  ruined. 

"  We  must  do  the  best  we  can,"  said  one 
of  the  men,  and  he  cut  down  the  white-barked 
pine.  He  chopped  off  the  boughs,  and  split 
the  trunk  in  four  pieces  to  mend  the  pack. 
It  was  a  very  small  tree  though  it  was  so 
old. 

"  Ah  !  Ah !  "  said  the  tree,  "  it  hurts,  but 
one  does  not  mind  that  when  one  is  realizing 
an  ambition.  Now  I  shall  go  to  the  top."  So 


THE   WHITE-BARKED  PINE  169 

he  went  over  Kearsarge  on  mule-back  quite 
like  an  old  traveler. 

"  Well,  we  are  rid  of  his  complaining,"  said 
the  pine  who  stood  next  to  him,  "  and  now  / 
am  the  highest  up  of  all  the  pines.  I  won- 
der if  it  is  really  so  much  finer  on  the  other 
side." 

His  old  companion,  in  four  pieces,  was 
swinging  down  the  other  side  of  the  moun- 
tain, and  as  he  went,  he  saw  high  peaks  and 
soddy  meadows,  long  winding  canons  with 
white  glancing  waters ;  and  heard  the  chorus 
of  the  falls.  When  it  was  night  the  miners  lit 
a  fire  and  loosened  up  the  packs,  and  after 
dark,  when  the  wind  hegan  to  move  among  the 
trees  and  the  fire  burned  low,  one  of  the  men 
threw  a  piece  of  the  white-barked  pine  on  it. 

"  Oh  !  Oh  !  "  cried  the  pine  as  the  flames 
caught  hold  of  it,  "  and  is  this  really  the  end 
of  aU  my  travels?" 

"  How  that  green  wood  sputters  ! "  said  the 
man ;  "  it  is  not  fit  even  for  firewood." 

The  next  day  the  wind  took  up  the  ash  and 
carried  it  back  over  the  pass,  and  dropped  it 


170  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

where  the  chopped  boughs  lay  fainting  on  the 
ground. 

"  Ah,  is  that  you  ?  "  they  said ;  "  now  you 
can  tell  us  what  it  is  like  on  the  other  side." 

"  How  ignorant  you  are,"  said  the  ash  of 
the  white-barked  pine,  "  one  would  know  you 
have  never  traveled.  It  is  exactly  like  this 
side."  But  he  could  not  hear  what  they  had 
to  say  to  that,  for  the  wind  whirled  him  away. 


NATANG-WIT'E,  THE  FIRST  RABBIT 
DRIVE 


NA'YANG-WIT'E,  THE  FIRST  RABBIT 
DRIVE 

THE  Basket  Woman  was  walking  over  the 
mesa  with  the  great  carrier  at  her  back.  Be- 
hind her  straggled  the  children  and  the  other 
women  of  the  campoodie,  each  with  a  cone- 
shaped  basket  slung  between  her  shoulders. 
Alan  clapped  his  hands  when  he  saw  them 
coming,  and  ran  out  along  the  path. 

"You  come  see  rabbit  drive,"  she  said, 
twinkling  her  shrewd  black  eyes  under  the 
border  of  her  basket  cap.  Alan  took  hold  of 
a  fold  of  her  dress  as  he  walked  beside  her,  for 
he  was  still  a  little  afraid  of  the  other  Indians, 
but  since  the  time  of  his  going  out  to  see  the 
buzzards  making  a  merry-go-round,  he  knew 
he  should  never  be  afraid  of  the  Basket 
Woman  again.  The  other  women  laughed  a 
great  deal  as  they  looked  at  him,  showing 
their  white  teeth  and  putting  back  the  black 


174  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

coarse  hair  out  of  their  eyes,  and  Alan  felt 
that  the  things  they  said  to  each  other  were 
about  him,  though  they  could  hardly  have 
been  unpleasant  with  so  much  smiling.  Now 
he  could  see  the  men  swarm  out  of  the  huts 
under  the  hill,  all  afoot  but  a  dozen  of  the  old 
men,  who  rode  small  kicking  ponies  at  a  tre- 
mendous pace,  digging  their  heels  into  the 
horses'  ribs.  They  passed  up  the  mesa  in  a 
blur  of  golden  dust ;  westward  they  dwindled 
to  a  speck,  something  ran  between  them  from 
man  to  man,  now  thick  like  a  cord,  then  shaken 
out  and  vanishing  in  air.  Then  the  riders 
dropped  from  their  horses  and  fumbled  on  the 
ground.  Alan  plucked  at  the  Basket  Woman's 
dress. 

«  Tell  me  what  it  is  they  do,"  he  said. 

"  It  is  the  net  which  they  set  with  forked 
stakes  of  willow,"  answered  the  Basket  Wo- 
man. Now  the  young  men  and  the  middle- 
aged  began  to  form  a  line  across  the  mesa, 
standing  three  man's  lengths  apart  in  the  sage. 
Some  of  them  were  armed  with  guns  and 
others  had  only  clubs ;  all  were  merry,  laugh- 


THE  FIRST  RABBIT  DRIVE  175 

ing  and  calling  to  one  another.  They  began 
to  move  forward  evenly  with  a  marching  move- 
ment, beating  the  brush  as  they  went.  Pre- 
sently up  popped  a  rabbit  from  the  sage  and 
ran  before  them  in  long  flying  leaps  ;  far  down 
the  line  another  bounded  from  a  stony  wash, 
his  lean  flanks  turned  broadside  to  the  sun. 

Then  the  hunters  broke  into  shouts  of 
laughter  and  clapping,  then  one  began  to  sing 
and  the  song  passed  from  man  to  man  along 
the  line ;  then  the  men  crouched  a  little  as 
Indians  do  in  singing,  then  their  bodies  swayed 
and  they  stamped  with  each  staccato  note  as 
they  moved  forward.  Rabbits  sprang  up  in 
the  scrub  and  went  before  them  like  the  wind, 
and  as  each  one  leaped  into  view  and  laid  back 
his  ears  in  flight,  the  cries  and  laughter  grew 
and  the  singing  rose  louder.  The  wind  blew 
it  back  to  the  women  and  children  straggling 
far  behind,  who  took  it  up,  and  the  burden  of 
it  was  this,  — 

E-ya-hahi,          E    -    ya,         E-ya-hi! 

T~      1 1        |~7— I     |||      J  »     ~— fl 

=JE       I      .  I   ••  I  l        *    II 


176  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

But  every  man  sang  it  for  himself,  begin- 
ning when  he  liked  and  leaving  off,  and  when 
a  rabbit  started  up  under  foot  or  one  over- 
leaped himself  and  went  sprawling  to  the  sand 
the  refrain  broke  out  again,  but  the  words, 
when  there  were  any,  seemed  not  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  hunt,  and  sounded 
to  Alan  like  a  game. 

"  He-yah-hi,  hi  !  he  has  it,  he  has  it,  he  has 
the  white,  he  has  it !  " 

"  Ndyang-wit' e !  "  chuckled  the  Basket 
Woman.  "  Ndyang-wit 'e,  ndyang-wit'e!  It 
is  as  it  was  of  old  time,  look  now  and  you 
shall  see." 

Alan  looked  at  the  hunters  again,  and 
whether  it  was  because  of  the  blown  dust  of 
the  mesa,  or  the  quiver  of  heat  that  rose  up 
from  the  sand,  or  because  the  Basket  Woman 
had  laid  her  hand  upon  him,  he  saw  that  they 
were  not  as  they  had  been  a  moment  since. 
Now  they  wore  no  hats  and  were  naked  from 
the  waist  up,  clothed  below  with  deerskin  gar- 
ments. Quivers  of  the  skin  of  cougars  with  the 
tails  hanging  down  were  slung  between  their 


THE  FIRST  RABBIT  DRIVE  177 

shoulders,  and  the  arrows  in  them  were  pointed 
with  tips  of  obsidian  and  winged  with  eagle 
feathers.  Every  man  carried  his  bow  or  his 
spear  in  his  hand.  Bright  beads  and  bits  of 
many-colored  sheh1  hung  and  glittered  in  their 
hair.  Rabbits  went  before  them  like  grass- 
hoppers for  number,  and  the  song  and  the 
shouting  were  fierce  and  wild.  "  But  what  is 
it  all  about?"  asked  Alan. 

"  Ndyang-wit'e,  na  yang-wit'e"  laughed 
the  Basket  Woman.  "  Wait  and  I  will  tell  you 
the  story  of  that  song,  for  it  is  so  that  every 
song  has  its  story,  without  which  no  one  may 
understand  it.  It  is  not  well  to  go  too  near 
the  guns  ;  sit  you  here  and  I  will  tell." 

So  Alan  bent  down  the  sagebrush  to  make 
him  a  springy  seat  and  the  Basket  Woman  sat 
upon  the  ground  with  her  hands  clasped  about 
her  knees. 

"  Long  and  long  ago,"  said  the  Basket 
Woman,  "  when  men  and  beasts  talked  to- 
gether, there  were  none  so  friendly  and  none 
so  much  about  the  wickiups  as  the  rabbit  peo- 
ple, and  some  of  our  fathers  have  told  that  it 


178  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

was  they  who  taught  my  people  the  game  of 
na'yang-wit'e.  I  know  not  if  that  be  true,  but 
there  were  none  so  cunning  as  they  to  play  it. 
And  this  is  the  manner  of  the  game:  there 
should  be  two  sticks,  or  better,  two  bits  of 
bone  of  the  fore  leg  of  a  deer,  made  smooth 
and  small  to  fit  the  palm.  One  of  them  is  all 
white  and  the  other  has  sinew  of  deer  stained 
black  and  wound  about  it.  These  the  players 
pass  from  hand  to  hand,  and  another  will  guess 
where  is  the  place  of  the  white,  and  he  who 
guesses  best  shall  win  all  the  other's  goods. 
It  is  good  sport  playing,  and  between  man 
and  man  it  comes  even  in  the  end,  for  some- 
times one  has  the  goods  and  sometimes  an- 
other, but  when  my  people  played  with  the 
rabbit  people  it  was  not  good,  for  the  rab- 
bits won  every  time.  Then  my  people  drew 
together,  all  the  Indians  of  every  sort,  and 
made  a  great  game  against  the  rabbit  people. 
There  were  two  long  rows  across  the  mesa, 
and  between  them  were  all  the  goods  piled 
high,  all  the  beads  and  ornaments  of  shell, 
all  the  feather  work  and  fine  dressed  deerskin, 


THE  FIRST  RABBIT  DRIVE  179 

all  the  worked  moccasins,  the  quivers,  the 
bows,  all  the  blankets,  the  baskets,  and  the 
woven  mats.  So  they  played  at  sunrise,  so  at 
noon,  so  when  it  was  night  and  the  fires  were 
lit.  So  on  into  the  night,  and  when  it  was 
morning  the  game  was  done,  for  the  Indians 
had  no  more  goods.  Ay-aiy  !  "  said  the  Bas- 
ket Woman,  "  long  will  the  rabbit  people  sor- 
row for  that  day,  for  it  was  then  that  the 
Indians  first  contrived  together  how  they 
might  be  rid  of  them.  Then  they  gathered 
up  the  milkweed,"  and  she  reached  out  and 
plucked  a  tall  stem  of  it  growing  beside  her, 
white  flowered  and  slender,  with  fine  leaves 
like  grass.  "  Then  they  broke  it  so,"  and  she 
laid  it  across  a  stone  and  beat  it  lightly  with 
a  stick,  "  then  they  drew  out  the  threads  soft 
and  white,  and  so  they  rolled  it  into  string." 
She  stretched  the  fibre  with  one  hand  and 
rolled  it  on  her  knee  with  the  other,  twisting 
and  twining  it.  "  Thus  was  the  string  made 
and  afterward  woven  into  nets.  The  mesh  of 
the  net  was  just  enough  to  let  a  rabbit's  head 
through,  but  not  his  body,  and  the  net  was  a 


180  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

little  wider  than  a  rabbit's  jump  when  he  goes 
fast  and  fleeing,  and  long  enough  to  stretch 
half  across  the  world.  So  on  a  day  the  net  was 
set  and  the  drive  was  begun  as  you  have  seen 
it,  and  as  the  Indians  went  they  remembered 
their  anger  and  taunted  the  rabbit  people.  So 
the  song  of  Ndyang-wit'e  was  made.  Now  let 
us  go  and  see  how  it  fares  with  the  rabbit  peo- 
ple, for  as  it  was  of  old  so  will  it  be  to-day." 

All  this  time  the  line  of  men  moved  stead- 
ily across  the  mesa  toward  the  net.  Now  and 
then  a  rabbit  turned,  made  bold  by  fright,  and 
passed  between  the  men  as  they  marched.  Then 
the  nearest  turned  to  shoot  him  as  he  ran,  but 
it  was  left  to  the  women  to  pick  up  the  game. 
Already  the  foremost  rabbits  were  at  the  net, 
turned  back  by  it,  leaping  toward  the  hunters 
and  fleeing  again  to  the  net.  The  old  men 
closed  in  the  ends  of  the  lane  where  the  rab- 
bits ran  about  distractedly  with  shrill  squeals  of 
anguished  fear.  Some  got  their  heads  through 
the  mesh  but  never  their  bodies,  and  as  it  is 
not  the  nature  of  rabbits  to  go  backward  they 
struggled  and  cried,  getting  themselves  the 


THE  FIRST  RABBIT  DRIVE  181 

more  entangled ;  some  blind  with  their  haste 
came  against  it  in  mid-leap,  and  were  thrown 
back  stunned  upon  the  sand.  The  men  sang  no 
more,  for  they  had  work  to  do,  serious  work, 
for  on  the  dried  flesh  of  the  rabbits  and  the 
blankets  made  of  their  skins  the  campoodie 
must  largely  count  for  food  and  warmth  in  the 
winter  season.  They  closed  in  to  the  killing 
and  made  short  work  of  it  with  clubs  and  the 
butt  ends  of  their  guns.  Then  the  women  came 
up  with  the  children  and  heaped  up  the  great 
carriers  with  the  game  while  the  men  wrung  the 
sweat  from  their  foreheads  and  counted  up  the 
kill.  Most  of  the  rabbits  were  the  kind  Alan 
had  learned  to  call  jack  rabbits,  but  the  Basket 
Woman  picked  up  a  fat  little  cotton-tail. 

"This  is  little  Tavwots,"  said  she,  "and 
you  shall  have  him  for  your  supper."  Alan's 
mind  still  ran  on  the  story  of  the  first  drive. 
"But  is  it  true?"  he  asked  her,  before  he 
had  given  thanks  for  the  gift. 

"  Now  this  is  the  sign  I  shah1  give  you  that 
the  tale  is  true,"  said  the  Basket  Woman. 
"  Ever  since  that  day  if  one  of  the  rabbit  peo- 


182  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

pie  meets  an  Indian  in  the  trail  he  flees  before 
him  as  you  saw  them  flee  to-day,  and  that  is 
because  of  na'yang-wit'e  and  the  first  rabbit 
drive."  Then  she  laughed,  but  Alan  took  his 
share  of  the  kill  on  his  shoulder  and  went  back 
across  the  mesa  slowly,  wondering. 


MAHALA  JOE 


MAHALA  JOE 


IN  the  campoodie  of  Three  Pines,  which  you 
probably  know  better  by  its  Spanish  name  of 
Tres  Pinos,  there  is  an  Indian,  well  thought 
of  among  his  own  people,  who  goes  about 
wearing  a  woman's  dress,  and  is  known  as 
Mahala  Joe.  He  should  be  about  fifty  years 
old  by  this  time,  and  has  a  quiet,  kindly  face. 
Sometimes  he  tucks  up  the  skirt  of  his  wo- 
man's dress  over  a  pair  of  blue  overalls  when 
he  has  a  man's  work  to  do,  but  at  feasts  and 
dances  he  wears  a  ribbon  around  his  waist 
and  a  handkerchief  on  his  head  as  the  other 
mahalas  do.  He  is  much  looked  to  because 
of  his  knowledge  of  white  people  and  their 
ways,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  lines  of  deep 
sadness  that  fall  in  his  face  when  at  rest, 
one  might  forget  that  the  woman's  gear  is 
the  badge  of  an  all  but  intolerable  shame.  At 


186  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

least  it  was  so  used  by  the  Paiutes,  but  when 
you  have  read  this  full  and  true  account  of  how 
it  was  first  put  on,  you  may  not  think  it  so. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  valley  about  Tres  Pinos 
was  all  one  sea  of  moving  grass  and  dusky, 
greenish  sage,  cropped  over  by  deer  and  ante- 
lope, north  as  far  as  Togobah,  and  south  to 
the  Bitter  Lake.  Beside  every  considerable 
stream  which  flowed  into  it  from  the  Sierras 
was  a  Paiute  campoodie,  and  all  they  knew  of 
white  people  was  by  hearsay  from  the  tribes 
across  the  mountains.  But  soon  enough  cat- 
tlemen began  to  push  their  herds  through  the 
Sierra  passes  to  the  Paiutes'  feeding-ground. 
The  Indians  saw  them  come,  and  though  they 
were  not  very  well  pleased,  they  held  still  by 
the  counsel  of  their  old  men ;  night  and  day 
they  made  medicine  and  prayed  that  the  white 
men  might  go  away. 

Among  the  first  of  the  cattlemen  in  the 
valley  about  Tres  Pinos  was  Joe  Baker,  who 
brought  a  young  wife,  and  built  his  house  not 
far  from  the  campoodie.  The  Indian  women 
watched  her  curiously  from  afar  because  of 


MAHALA  JOE  187 

a  whisper  that  ran  among  the  wattled  huts. 
When  the  year  was  far  gone,  and  the  sun- 
cured  grasses  curled  whitish  brown,  a  doctor 
came  riding  hard  from  the  fort  at  Edswick, 
forty  miles  to  the  south,  and  though  they 
watched,  they  did  not  see  him  ride  away.  It 
was  the  third  day  at  evening  when  Joe  Baker 
came  walking  towards  the  campoodie,  and 
his  face  was  set  and  sad.  He  carried  some- 
thing rolled  in  a  blanket,  and  looked  anx- 
iously at  the  women  as  he  went  between  the 
huts.  It  was  about  the  hour  of  the  evening 
meal,  and  the  mahalas  sat  about  the  fires 
watching  the  cooking-pots.  He  came  at  last 
opposite  a  young  woman  who  sat  nursing 
her  child.  She  had  a  bright,  pleasant  face, 
and  her  little  one  seemed  about  six  months 
old.  Her  husband  stood  near  and  watched 
them  with  great  pride.  Joe  Baker  knelt 
down  in  front  of  the  mahala,  and  opened 
the  roll  of  blankets.  He  showed  her  a  day- 
old  baby  that  wrinkled  up  its  small  face  and 
cried. 

"Its  mother  is  dead,"  said  the  cattleman. 


188  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

The  young  Indian  mother  did  not  know  Eng- 
lish, but  she  did  not  need  speech  to  know  what 
had  happened.  She  looked  pitifully  at  the 
child,  and  at  her  husband  timidly.  Joe  Baker 
went  and  laid  his  rifle  and  cartridge  belt  at 
the  Paiute's  feet.  The  Indian  picked  up  the 
gun  and  fingered  it;  his  wife  smiled.  She 
put  down  her  own  child,  and  lifted  the  little 
white  stranger  to  her  breast.  It  nozzled 
against  her  and  hushed  its  crying  ;  the  young 
mother  laughed. 

"See  how  greedy  it  is,"  she  said;  "it  is 
truly  white."  She  drew  up  the  blanket  around 
the  child  and  comforted  it. 

The  cattleman  called  to  him  one  of  the 
Indians  who  could  speak  a  little  English. 

"Tell  her,"  he  said,  "that  I  wish  her  to 
care  for  the  child.  His  name  is  Walter.  Tell 
her  that  she  is  to  come  to  my  house  for 
everything  he  needs,  and  for  every  month 
that  he  keeps  fat  and  well  she  shall  have  a 
fat  steer  from  my  herd."  So  it  was  agreed. 

As  soon  as  Walter  was  old  enough  he 
came  to  sleep  at  his  father's  house,  but  the 


MAHALA  JOE  189 

Indian  woman,  whom  he  called  Ebia,  came 
every  day  to  tend  him.  Her  son  was  his 
brother,  and  Walter  learned  to  speak  Paiute 
before  he  learned  English.  The  two  boys 
were  always  together,  but  as  yet  the  little 
Indian  had  no  name.  It  is  not  the  custom 
among  Paiutes  to  give  names  to  those  who 
have  not  done  anything  worth  naming. 

"But  I  have  a  name,"  said  Walter,  "  and 
so  shall  he.  I  will  cah1  him  Joe.  That  is  my 
father's  name,  and  it  is  a  good  name,  too." 

When  Mr.  Baker  was  away  with  the  cattle 
Walter  slept  at  the  campoodie,  and  Joe's 
mother  made  him  a  buckskin  shirt.  At  that 
time  he  was  so  brown  with  the  sun  and  the 
wind  that  only  by  his  eyes  could  you  tell  that 
he  was  white  ;  he  was  also  very  happy.  But 
as  this  is  to  be  the  story  of  how  Joe  came  to 
the  wearing  of  a  woman's  dress,  I  cannot  tell 
you  all  the  plays  they  had,  how  they  went  on 
their  first  hunting,  nor  what  they  found  in 
the  creek  of  Tres  Pinos. 

The  beginning  of  the  whole  affair  of  Mahala 
Joe  must  be  laid  to  the  arrow-maker.  The 


190  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

arrow-maker  had  a  stiff  knee  from  a  wound 
in  a  long-gone  battle,  and  for  that  reason  he 
sat  in  the  shade  of  his  wickiup,  and  chipped 
arrow  points  from  flakes  of  obsidian  that  the 
young  men  brought  him  from  Togobah,  fit- 
ting them  to  shafts  of  reeds  from  the  river 
marsh.  He  used  to  coax  the  boys  to  wade  in 
the  brown  water  and  cut  the  reeds,  for  the 
dampness  made  his  knee  ache.  They  drove 
bargains  with  him  for  arrows  for  their  own 
hunting,  or  for  the  sake  of  the  stories  he 
could  tell.  For  an  armful  of  reeds  he  would 
make  three  arrows,  and  for  a  double  armful 
he  would  tell  tales.  These  were  mostly  of 
great  huntings  and  old  wars,  but  when  it 
was  winter,  and  no  snakes  in  the  long 
grass  to  overhear,  he  would  tell  Wonder- 
stories.  The  boys  would  lie  with  their  toes 
in  the  warm  ashes,  and  the  arrow-maker  would 
begin. 

"  You  can  see,"  said  the  arrow-maker,  "  on 
the  top  of  Waban  the  tall  boulder  looking  on 
the  valleys  east  and  west.  That  is  the  very 
boundary  between  the  Paiute  country  and 


MAHALA  JOE  191 

Shoshone  land.  The  boulder  is  a  hundred 
tunes  taller  than  the  tallest  man,  and  thicker 
through  than  six  horses  standing  nose  to  tail ; 
the  shadow  of  it  falls  all  down  the  slope.  At 
mornings  it  falls  toward  the  Paiute  peoples, 
and  evenings  it  falls  on  Shoshone  land.  Now 
on  this  side  of  the  valley,  beginning  at  the 
campoodie,  you  will  see  a  row  of  pine  trees 
standing  all  upstream  one  behind  another. 
See,  the  long  branches  grow  on  the  side 
toward  the  hill ;  and  some  may  tell  you  it  is 
because  of  the  way  the  wind  blows,  but  I 
say  it  is  because  they  reach  out  in  a  hurry  to 
get  up  the  mountain.  Now  I  will  tell  you  how 
these  things  came  about. 

"  Very  long  ago  all  the  Paiutes  of  this  val- 
ley were  ruled  by  two  brothers,  a  chief  and  a 
medicine  man,  Winnedumah  and  Tinnemaha. 
They  were  both  very  wise,  and  one  of  them 
never  did  anything  without  the  other.  They 
taught  the  tribes  not  to  war  upon  each 
other,  but  to  stand  fast  as  brothers,  and  so 
they  brought  peace  into  the  land.  At  that 
time  there  were  no  white  people  heard  of,  and 


192  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

game  was  plenty.  The  young  honored  the 
old,  and  nothing  was  as  it  is  now." 

When  the  arrow-maker  came  to  this  point, 
the  boys  fidgeted  with  their  toes,  and  made 
believe  to  steal  the  old  man's  arrows  to  dis- 
tract his  attention.  They  did  not  care  to  hear 
about  the  falling  off  of  the  Paiutes;  they 
wished  to  have  the  tale.  Then  the  arrow- 
maker  would  hurry  on  to  the  time  when 
there  arose  a  war  between  the  Paiutes  and 
the  Shoshones.  Then  Winnedumah  put  on 
his  war  bonnet,  and  Tinnemaha  made  medi- 
cine. Word  went  around  among  the  braves 
that  if  they  stood  together  man  to  man  as 
brothers,  then  they  should  have  this  war. 

"And  so  they  might,"  said  the  arrow- 
maker,  "but  at  last  their  hearts  turned  to 
water.  The  tribes  came  together  on  the  top  of 
Waban.  Yes ;  where  the  boulder  now  stands, 
for  that  is  the  boundary  of  our  lands,  for  no 
brave  would  fight  off  his  own  ground  for  fear 
of  the  other's  medicine.  So  they  fought.  The 
eagles  heard  the  twang  of  the  bowstring,  and 
swung  down  from  White  Mountain.  The  vul- 


MAHALA  JOE  193 

tures  smelled  the  smell  of  battle,  and  came  in 
from  Shoshone  land.  Their  wings  were  dark 
like  a  cloud,  and  underneath  the  arrows  flew 
like  hail.  The  Paiutes  were  the  better  bow- 
men, and  they  caught  the  Shoshone  arrows 
where  they  struck  in  the  earth  and  shot 
them  back  again.  Then  the  Shoshones  were 
ashamed,  and  about  the  time  of  the  sun  going 
down  they  called  upon  their  medicine  men, 
and  one  let  fly  a  magic  arrow,  —  for  none 
other  would  touch  him,  —  and  it  struck  in  the 
throat  of  Tinnemaha. 

"  Now  when  that  befell,"  went  on  the 
arrow-maker,  "the  braves  forgot  the  word 
that  had  gone  before  the  battle,  for  they 
turned  their  backs  to  the  medicine  man,  all 
but  Winnedumah,  his  brother,  and  fled  this 
way  from  Waban.  Then  stood  Winnedumah 
by  Tinnemaha,  for  that  was  the  way  of  those 
two ;  whatever  happened,  one  would  not  leave 
the  other.  There  was  none  left  to  carry  on 
the  fight,  and  yet  since  he  was  so  great  a 
chief  the  Shoshones  were  afraid  to  take  him, 
and  the  sun  went  down.  In  the  dusk  they 


194  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

saw  a  bulk,  and  they  said,  i  He  is  still  stand- 
ing ; '  but  when  it  was  morning  light  they 
saw  only  a  great  rock,  so  you  see  it  to  this 
day.  As  for  the  braves  who  ran  away,  they 
were  changed  to  pine  trees,  but  in  their  hearts 
they  are  cowards  yet,  therefore  they  stretch 
out  their  arms  and  strive  toward  the  moun- 
tain. And  that,"  said  the  arrow-maker,  "is 
how  the  tall  stones  came  to  be  on  the  top  of 
Waban.  But  it  was  not  in  my  day  nor  my 
father's."  Then  the  boys  would  look  up  at 
Winnedumah,  and  were  half  afraid,  and  as 
for  the  tale,  they  quite  believed  it. 

The  arrow-maker  was  growing  old.  His 
knee  hurt  him  in  cold  weather,  and  he  could 
not  make  arrow  points  fast  enough  to  satisfy 
the  boys,  who  lost  a  great  many  in  the  winter 
season  shooting  at  ducks  in  the  tulares.  Wal- 
ter's father  promised  him  a  rifle  when  he  was 
fifteen,  but  that  was  years  away.  There  was 
a  rock  in  the  canon  behind  Tres  Pinos  with  a 
great  crack  in  the  top.  When  the  young  men 
rode  to  the  hunting,  they  shot  each  an  arrow 
at  it,  and  if  it  stuck  it  was  a  promise  of  good 


MAHALA  JOE  195 

luck.  The  boys  scaled  the  rock  by  means 
of  a  grapevine  ladder,  and  pried  out  the  old 
points.  This  gave  them  an  idea. 

"  Upon  Waban  where  the  fighting  was, 
there  must  be  a  great  many  arrow  points," 
said  Walter. 

"  So  there  must  be,"  said  Joe. 

"Let  us  go  after  them,"  said  the  white 
boy ;  but  the  other  dared  not,  for  no  Paiute 
would  go  within  a  bowshot  of  Winnedumah ; 
nevertheless,  they  talked  the  matter  over. 

"How  near  would  you  go?"  asked  Wal- 
ter. 

"  As  near  as  a  strong  man  might  shoot  an 
arrow,"  said  Joe. 

"If  you  will  go  so  far,"  said  Walter,  "I 
will  go  the  rest  of  the  way." 

"  It  is  a  two  days'  journey,"  said  the  Paiute, 
but  he  did  not  make  any  other  objection. 

It  was  a  warm  day  of  spring  when  they 
set  out.  The  cattleman  was  off  to  the  river 
meadow,  and  Joe's  mother  was  out  with  the 
other  mahalas  gathering  taboose. 

"If  I  were  fifteen,  and  had  my  rifle,   I 


196  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

would  not  be  afraid  of  anything,"  said  Wal- 
ter. 

"  But  in  that  case  we  would  not  need  to  go 
after  arrow  points,"  said  the  Indian  boy. 

They  climbed  all  day  in  a  bewildering  waste 
of  boulders  and  scrubby  trees.  They  could 
see  Winnedumah  shining  whitely  on  the  ridge 
ahead,  but  when  they  had  gone  down  into  the 
gully  with  great  labor,  and  up  the  other  side, 
there  it  stood  whitely  just  another  ridge  away. 

"  It  is  like  the  false  water  in  the  desert," 
said  Walter.  "  It  goes  farther  from  you,  and 
when  you  get  to  it  there  is  no  water  there." 

"  It  is  magic  medicine,"  said  Indian  Joe. 
"  No  good  comes  of  going  against  medicine." 

"  If  you  are  afraid,"  said  Walter,  "  why  do 
you  not  say  so  ?  You  may  go  back  if  you  like, 
and  I  will  go  on  by  myself." 

Joe  would  not  make  any  answer  to  that. 
They  were  hot  and  tired,  and  awed  by  the 
stillness  of  the  hills.  They  kept  on  after  that, 
angry  and  apart ;  sometimes  they  lost  sight  of 
each  other  among  the  boulders  and  underbrush. 
But  it  seemed  that  it  must  really  have  been 


MAHAL  A  JOE  197 

as  one  or  the  other  of  them  had  said,  for 
when  they  came  out  on  a  high  mesa  presently, 
there  was  no  Winnedumah  anywhere  in  sight. 
They  would  have  stopped  then  and  taken 
counsel,  but  they  were  too  angry  for  that,  so 
they  walked  on  in  silence,  and  the  day  failed 
rapidly,  as  it  will  do  in  high  places.  They 
began  to  draw  near  together  and  to  be  afraid. 
At  last  the  Indian  boy  stopped  and  gathered 
the  tops  of  bushes  together,  and  began  to 
weave  a  shelter  for  the  night,  and  when  Wal- 
ter saw  that  he  made  it  large  enough  for  two, 
he  spoke  to  him. 

"  Are  we  lost  ?  "  he  said. 

"  We  are  lost  for  to-night,"  said  Joe,  "  but 
in  the  morning  we  will  find  ourselves." 

They  ate  dried  venison  and  drank  from  the 
wicker  bottle,  and  huddled  together  because 
of  the  dark  and  the  chill. 

"  Why  do  we  not  see  the  stone  any  more  ?  " 
asked  Walter  in  a  whisper. 

"  I  do  not  know,"  said  Joe.  "  I  think  it  has 
gone  away." 

"Will  he  come  after  us?" 


198  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  I  do  not  know.  I  have  on  my  elk's  tooth," 
said  Joe,  and  he  clasped  the  charm  that  hung 
about  his  neck.  They  started  and  shivered, 
hearing  a  stone  crash  far  away  as  it  rolled 
down  the  mountain-side,  and  the  wind  began 
to  move  among  the  pines. 

"  Joe,"  said  Walter,  "  I  am  sorry  I  said  that 
you  were  afraid." 

"  It  is  nothing,"  said  the  Paiute.  "  Besides, 
I  am  afraid." 

"So  am  I,"  whispered  the  other.  "Joe," 
he  said  again  after  a  long  silence,  "  if  he  comes 
after  us,  what  shall  we  do  ?  " 

"  We  will  stay  by  each  other." 

"  Like  the  two  brothers,  whatever  happens," 
said  the  white  boy,  "  forever  and  ever." 

"  We  are  two  brothers,"  said  Joe. 

"Will  you  swear  it?" 

"  On  my  elk's  tooth." 

Then  they  each  took  the  elk's  tooth  in  his 
hand  and  made  a  vow  that  whether  Winne- 
dumah  came  down  from  his  rock,  or  whether 
the  Shoshones  found  them,  come  what  would, 
they  would  stand  together.  Then  they  were 


MAHALA  JOE  199 

comforted,  and  lay  down,  holding  each  other's 
hands. 

"  I  hear  some  one  walking,"  said  Walter. 

"It  is  the  wind  among  the  pines,"  said 
Joe. 

A  twig  snapped.  "  What  is  that  ?  "  said  the 
one  boy. 

"  It  is  a  fox  or  a  coyote  passing,"  said  the 
other,  but  he  knew  better.  They  lay  still, 
scarcely  breathing,  and  throbbed  with  fear. 
They  felt  a  sense  of  a  presence  approaching 
in  the  night,  the  whisper  of  a  moccasin  on  the 
gravelly  soil,  the  swish  of  displaced  bushes 
springing  back  to  place.  They  saw  a  bulk 
shape  itself  out  of  the  dark ;  it  came  and  stood 
over  them,  and  they  saw  that  it  was  an  Indian 
looking  larger  in  the  gloom.  He  spoke  to 
them,  and  whether  he  spoke  in  a  strange 
tongue,  or  they  were  too  frightened  to  under- 
stand, they  could  not  tell. 

"  Do  not  kill  us ! "  cried  Walter,  but  the 
Indian  boy  made  no  sound.  The  man  took 
Walter  by  the  shoulders  and  lifted  him  up. 

"  White,"  said  he. 


200  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  We  are  brothers,"  said  Joe ;  "  we  have 
sworn  it." 

"  So,"  said  the  man,  and  it  seemed  as  if  he 
smiled. 

"  Until  we  die,"  said  both  the  boys.  The 
Indian  gave  a  grunt. 

"  A  white  man,"  he  said,  "  is —  white."  It 
did  not  seem  as  if  that  was  what  he  meant  to 
say. 

"  Come,  I  will  take  you  to  your  people.  They 
search  for  you  about  the  foot  of  Waban.  These 
three  hours  I  have  watched  you  and  them." 
The  boys  clutched  at  each  other  in  the  dark. 
They  were  sure  now  who  spoke  to  them,  and 
between  fear  and  fatigue  and  the  cramp  of  cold 
they  staggered  and  stumbled  as  they  walked. 
The  Indian  stopped  and  considered  them. 

"  I  cannot  carry  both,"  he  said. 

"  I  am  the  older,"  said  Joe ;  "  I  can  walk." 
Without  any  more  words  the  man  picked  up 
Walter,  who  trembled,  and  walked  off  down 
the  slope.  They  went  a  long  way  through  the 
scrub  and  under  the  tamarack  pines.  The  man 
was  naked  to  the  waist,  and  had  a  quiver  full 


MAHALA  JOE  201 

of  arrows  on  his  shoulder.  The  buckthorn 
branches  whipped  and  scraped  against  his 
skin,  but  he  did  not  seem  to  mind.  At  last 
they  came  to  a  place  where  they  could  see  a 
dull  red  spark  across  an  open  flat. 

"  That,"  said  the  Indian, "  is  the  fire  of  your 
people.  They  missed  you  at  afternoon,  and 
have  been  looking  for  you.  From  my  station 
on  the  hill  I  saw."  Then  he  took  the  boy  by 
the  shoulders. 

"  Look  you,"  he  said,  "  no  good  comes  of 
mixing  white  and  brown,  but  now  that  the 
vow  is  made,  see  to  the  keeping  of  it."  Then 
he  stepped  back  from  them  and  seemed  to  melt 
into  the  dark.  Ahead  of  them  the  boys  saw  the 
light  of  the  fire  flare  up  with  new  fuel,  and 
shadows,  which  they  knew  for  the  figures  of 
their  friends,  moved  between  them  and  the 
flame.  Swiftly  as  two  scared  rabbits  they  ran 
on  toward  the  glow. 

When  Walter  and  Joe  had  told  them  the 
story  at  the  campoodie,  the  Paiutes  made  a 
great  deal  of  it,  especially  the  arrow-maker. 

"  Without  a  doubt,"  he  said,  "  it  was  Win- 


202  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

nedumah  who  came  to  you,  and  not,  as  some 
think,  a  Shoshone  who  was  spying  on  our  land. 
It  is  a  great  mystery.  But  since  you  have  made 
a  vow  of  brothers,  you  should  keep  it  after 
the  ancient  use."  Then  he  took  a  knife  of 
obsidian  and  cut  their  arms,  and  rubbed  a 
little  of  the  blood  of  each  upon  the  other. 

"Now,"  he  said,  "you  are  one  fellowship 
and  one  blood,  and  that  is  as  it  should  be,  for 
you  were  both  nursed  at  one  breast.  See  that 
you  keep  the  vow." 

"  We  will,"  said  the  boys  solemnly,  and  they 
went  out  into  the  sunlight  very  proud  of  the 
blood  upon  their  bared  arms,  holding  by  each 
other's  hands. 

n 

When  Walter  was  fifteen  his  father  gave  him 
a  rifle,  as  he  had  promised,  and  a  word  of  advice 
with  it. 

"  Learn  to  shoot  quickly  and  well,"  he  said, 
"  and  never  ride  out  from  home  without  it.  No 
one  can  tell  what  this  trouble  with  the  Indians 
may  come  to  in  the  end." 


MAHALA  JOE  203 

Walter  rode  straight  to  the  campoodie.  He 
was  never  happy  in  any  of  his  gifts  until  he 
had  showed  them  to  Joe.  There  was  a  group  of 
older  men  at  the  camp,  quartering  a  deer  which 
they  had  brought  in.  One  of  them,  called  Scar- 
Face,  looked  at  Walter  with  a  leering  frown. 

"  See,"  he  said,  "  they  are  arming  the  very 
children  with  guns." 

"  My  father  promised  it  to  me  many  years 
ago,"  said  Walter.  "  It  is  my  birthday  gift." 

He  could  not  explain  why,  and  he  grew  angry 
at  the  man's  accusing  tone,  but  after  it  he  did 
not  like  showing  his  present  to  the  Indians. 

He  called  Joe,  and  they  went  over  to  a  cave 
in  the  black  rock  where  they  had  kept  their  boy- 
ish treasures  and  planned  their  plays  since  they 
were  children.  Joe  thought  the  rifle  a  beauty, 
and  turned  it  over  admiringly  in  the  shadow  of 
the  cave.  They  tried  shooting  at  a  mark,  and 
then  decided  to  go  up  Oak  Creek  for  a  shot  at 
the  gray  squirrels.  There  they  sighted  a  band 
of  antelope  that  led  them  over  a  tongue  of  hills 
into  Little  Round  Valley,  where  they  found 
themselves  at  noon  twelve  miles  from  home  and 


204  THE  BASKET   WOMAN 

very  hungry.  They  had  no  antelope,  but  four 
squirrels  and  a  grouse.  The  two  boys  made 
a  fire  for  cooking  in  a  quiet  place  by  a  spring 
of  sweet  water. 

"  You  may  have  my  rifle  to  use  as  often 
as  you  like,"  said  Walter,  "  but  you  must  not 
lend  it  to  any  one  in  the  campoodie,  especially 
to  Scar-Face.  My  father  says  he  is  the  one 
who  is  stirring  up  ah1  this  trouble  with  the 
whites." 

"  The  white  men  do  not  need  any  one  to 
help  them  get  into  trouble,"  said  Joe.  "  They 
can  do  that  for  themselves." 

"  It  is  the  fault  of  the  Indians,"  said  Wal- 
ter. "If  they  did  not  shoot  the  cattle,  the 
white  men  would  leave  them  alone." 

"But  if  the  white  men  come  first  to  our 
lands  with  noise  and  trampling  and  scare 
away  the  game,  what  then  will  they  shoot  ?  " 
asked  the  Paiute. 

Walter  did  not  make  any  answer  to  that. 
He  had  often  gone  hunting  with  Joe  and  his 
father,  and  he  knew  what  it  meant  to  walk 
far,  and  fasting,  after  game  made  shy  by  the 


MAHAL  A  JOE  205 

rifles  of  cattlemen,  and  at  last  to  return  empty 
to  the  campoodie  where  there  were  women 
and  children  with  hungry  eyes. 

"Is  it  true,"  he  said  after  a  while,  "that 
Scar-Face  is  stirring  up  all  the  Indians  in  the 
valley?" 

"  How  should  I  know  ?  "  said  Joe ;  "  I  am 
only  a  boy,  and  have  not  killed  big  game. 
I  am  not  admitted  to  the  counsels  of  the 
old  men.  What  does  it  matter  to  us  whether 
of  old  feuds  or  new?  Are  we  not  brothers 
sworn?" 

Then,  as  the  dinner  was  done,  they  ate 
each  of  the  other's  kill,  for  it  was  the  custom 
of  the  Paiutes  at  that  time  that  no  youth 
should  eat  game  of  his  own  killing  until  he 
was  fully  grown.  As  they  walked  homeward 
the  boys  planned  to  get  permission  to  go  up 
on  Waban  for  a  week,  after  mountain  sheep, 
before  the  snows  began. 

Mr.  Baker  looked  grave  when  Walter  spoke 
to  him. 

"  My  boy,"  he  said,  "  I  wish  you  would  not 
plan  long  trips  like  this  without  first  speaking 


206  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

to  me.  It  is  hardly  safe  in  the  present  state 
of  feeling  among  the  Indians  to  let  you  go 
with  them  in  this  fashion.  A  whole  week, 
too.  But  as  you  have  already  spoken  of  it, 
and  it  has  probably  been  talked  over  in  the 
campoodie,  for  me  to  refuse  now  would  look 
as  if  I  suspected  something,  and  might  bring 
about  the  thing  I  most  fear." 

"You  should  not  be  afraid  for  me  with 
Joe,  father,  for  we  are  brothers  sworn,"  said 
Walter,  and  he  told  his  father  how  they  had 
mixed  the  blood  of  their  arms  in  the  arrow- 
maker's  hut  after  they  had  come  back  from 
their  first  journey  on  Waban. 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Baker,  who  had  not 
heard  of  this  before,  "  I  know  that  they  set 
great  store  by  these  superstitious  customs, 
but  I  have  not  much  faith  in  the  word  of  a 
Paiute  when  he  is  dealing  with  a  white  man. 
However,  you  had  better  go  on  with  this 
hunting  trip.  Take  Hank  with  you,  and  Joe's 
father,  and  do  not  be  gone  more  than  five 
days  at  the  outside." 

Hank  was  one  of  Mr.  Baker's  vaqueros, 


MAHALA  JOE  207 

and  very  glad  to  get  off  for  a  few  days'  hunt- 
ing on  the  blunt  top  of  Waban.  On  the  Mon- 
day following  they  left  the  Baker  ranch  for 
the  mountain.  As  the  two  boys  rode  up  the 
boulder-strewn  slope  it  set  them  talking  of 
the  first  time  they  had  gone  that  way  on  their 
fruitless  hunt  for  arrow  points  about  the  foot 
of  Winnedumah,  and  of  all  that  happened  to 
them  at  that  time.  The  valley  lay  below  them 
full  of  purple  mist,  and  away  by  the  creek  of 
Tres  Pinos  the  brown,  wattled  huts  of  the 
campoodie  like  great  wasps'  nests  stuck  in  the 
sage.  Hank  and  Joe's  father,  with  the  pack 
horses,  were  ahead  of  them  far  up  the  trail ; 
Joe  and  Walter  let  their  own  ponies  lag,  and 
the  nose  of  one  touched  the  flank  of  the 
other  as  they  climbed  slowly  up  the  steep, 
and  the  boys  turned  their  faces  to  each  other, 
as  if  they  had  some  vague  warning  that  they 
would  not  ride  so  and  talk  familiarly  again, 
as  if  the  boiling  anger  of  the  tribes  in  the 
valley  had  brewed  a  sort  of  mist  that  rose  up 
and  gloomed  the  pleasant  air  on  the  slope  of 
Waban. 


208  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  Joe,"  said  Walter,  "  my  father  says  if  it 
came  to  a  fight  between  the  white  settlers 
and  the  Paiutes,  that  you  would  not  hold  by 
the  word  we  have  passed." 

"  That  is  the  speech  of  a  white  man,"  said 
Joe. 

"  But  would  you?"  the  other  insisted. 

"  I  am  a  Paiute,"  said  Joe ;  "  I  will  hold 
by  my  people,  also  by  my  word ;  I  will  not 
fight  against  you." 

"  Nor  I  against  you,  but  I  would  not  like 
to  have  my  father  think  you  had  broken  your 
word." 

"  Have  no  care,"  said  the  Indian,  "  I  will 
not  break  it." 

Mr.  Baker  looked  anxiously  after  his  son 
as  he  rode  to  the  hunting  on  Waban ;  he 
looked  anxiously  up  that  trail  every  hour 
until  the  boy  came  again,  and  that,  as  it 
turned  out,  was  at  the  end  of  three  days. 
For  the  trouble  among  the  Indians  had  come 
to  something  at  last,  —  the  wasps  were  all 
out  of  nest  by  the  brown  creeks,  and  with 
them  a  flight  of  stinging  arrows.  The  trouble 


MAHALA  JOE  209 

began  at  Cottonwood,  and  the  hunting  party 
on  Waban  the  second  day  out  saw  a  tall,  pale 
column  of  smoke  that  rose  up  from  the  notch 
of  the  hill  behind  the  settlement,  and  fanned 
out  slowly  into  the  pale  blueness  of  the  sky. 

It  went  on  evenly,  neither  more  nor  less, 
thick  smoke  from  a  fire  of  green  wood  stead- 
ily tended.  Before  noon  another  rose  from 
the  mouth  of  Oak  Creek,  and  a  third  from 
Tunawai.  They  waved  and  beckoned  to  one 
another,  calling  to  counsel. 

"  Signal  fires,"  said  Hank ;  "  that  means 
mischief." 

And  from  that  on  he  went  with  his  rifle 
half  cocked,  and  walked  always  so  that  he 
might  keep  Joe's  father  in  full  view.  By 
night  that  same  day  there  were  seven  smoke 
trees  growing  up  in  the  long  valley,  and 
spreading  thin,  pale  branches  to  the  sky. 
There  was  no  zest  left  in  the  hunt,  and  in 
the  morning  they  owned  it.  Walter  was  wor- 
ried by  what  he  knew  his  father's  anxiety 
must  be.  Then  the  party  began  to  ride  down 
again,  and  always  Hank  made  the  Indian  go 


210  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

before.  Away  by  the  foot  of  Oppapago  rose 
a  black  volume  of  smoke,  thick,  and  lighted 
underneath  by  flames.  It  might  be  the  reek 
of  a  burning  ranch  house.  The  boys  were 
excited  and  afraid.  They  talked  softly  and 
crowded  their  ponies  together  on  the  trail. 

"  Joe,"  said  Walter  whisperingly,  "  if  there 
is  battle,  you  will  have  to  go  to  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  Joe. 

"  And  you  will  fight ;  otherwise  they  will 
call  you  a  coward,  and  if  you  run  away,  they 
will  kill  you." 

"  So  I  suppose,"  said  Joe. 

"Or  they  will  make  you  wear  a  woman's 
dress  like  To-go-na-tee,  the  man  who  got  up 
too  late."  This  was  a  reminder  from  one  of 
the  arrow-maker's  tales.  "  But  you  have  pro- 
mised not  to  fight." 

"Look  you,"  said  the  Indian  boy;  "if  a 
white  man  came  to  kill  me,  I  would  kill  him. 
That  is  right.  But  I  will  not  fight  you  nor 
your  father's  house.  That  is  my  vow." 

The  white  boy  put  out  his  hand,  and  laid 
it  on  the  flank  of  the  foremost  pony.  The 


MAHALA  JOE  211 

Indian  boy's  fingers  came  behind  him,  and 
crept  along  the  pony's  back  until  they  reached 
the  other  hand.  They  rode  forward  without 
talking. 

Toward  noon  they  made  out  horsemen 
riding  on  the  trail  below  them.  As  it  wound 
in  and  out  around  the  blind  gullies  they  saw 
and  lost  sight  of  them  a  dozen  times.  At  last, 
where  the  fringe  of  the  tall  trees  began,  they 
came  face  to  face.  It  was  Mr.  Baker  and  a 
party  of  five  men;  they  carried  rifles  and 
had  set  and  anxious  looks. 

"  What  will  you  have?"  said  Indian  Joe's 
father  as  they  drew  up  before  him  under  a 
tamarack  pine. 

"  My  son,"  said  the  cattleman. 

"  Is  there  war  ?  "  said  the  Indian. 

"  There  is  war.    Come,  Walter." 

The  boys  were  still  and  scared.  Slowly 
Hank  and  Walter  drew  their  horses  out  of 
the  path  and  joined  the  men.  Indian  Joe  and 
his  father  passed  forward  on  the  trail. 

"  Do  them  no  harm,"  said  Joe  Baker  to 
those  that  were  with  him. 


212  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

"  Good-by,  Joe,"  said  Walter  half  aloud. 

The  other  did  not  turn  his  head,  but  as  he 
went  they  noticed  that  he  had  bared  his  right 
arm  from  the  hunting  shirt,  and  an  inch  above 
the  elbow  showed  a  thin,  white  scar.  Walter 
had  the  twin  of  that  mark  under  his  flannels. 

Mr.  Baker  did  not  mind  fighting  Indians ; 
he  thought  it  a  good  thing  to  have  their 
troubles  settled  all  at  once  in  this  way,  but  he 
did  not  want  his  son  mixed  up  in  it.  The  first 
thing  he  did  when  he  got  home  was  to  send 
him  off  secretly  by  night  to  the  fort,  and  from 
there  he  passed  over  the  mountains  with  other 
of  the  settlers'  families  under  strong  escort, 
and  finally  went  to  his  mother's  people  in  the 
East,  and  was  put  to  school.  As  it  turned  out 
he  never  came  back  to  Tres  Pinos,  he  does 
not  come  into  this  story  any  more. 

When  the  first  smoke  rose  up  that  showed 
where  the  fierce  hate  of  the  Paiutes  had  broken 
into  flame,  the  Indians  took  their  women  and 
children  away  from  the  pleasant  open  slopes, 
and  hid  them  in  deep  canons  in  secret  places 
of  the  rocks.  There  they  feathered  arrows, 


MAHALA  JOE  213 

and  twisted  bowstrings  of  the  sinew  of  deer. 
And  because  there  were  so  many  grave  things 
done,  and  it  was  not  the  custom  for  boys 
to  question  their  elders,  Joe  never  heard  how 
Walter  had  been  sent  away.  He  thought  him 
still  at  the  ranch  with  his  father,  and  it  is 
because  of  this  mistake  that  there  is  any 
more  story  at  all. 

You  may  be  sure  that,  of  those  two  boys, 
Joe's  was  the  deeper  loving,  for,  besides  hav- 
ing grown  up  together,  Walter  was  white, 
therefore  thinking  himself,  and  making  the 
other  believe  it,  the  better  of  the  two.  But 
for  this  Walter  made  no  difference  in  his  be- 
havior ;  had  Joe  to  eat  at  his  table,  and  would 
have  him  sleep  in  his  bed,  but  Joe  laughed, 
and  lay  on  the  floor.  All  this  was  counted  a 
kindness  and  a  great  honor  in  the  campoodie. 
Walter  could  find  out  things  by  looking  in  a 
book,  which  was  sheer  magic,  and  had  taught 
Joe  to  write  a  little,  so  that  he  could  send  word 
by  means  of  a  piece  of  paper,  which  was  clev- 
erer than  the  tricks  Joe  had  taught  him,  of 
reading  the  signs  of  antelope  and  elk  and  deer. 


214  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

The  white  boy  was  to  the  Indian  a  little  of  all 
the  heroes  and  bright  ones  of  the  arrow- 
maker's  tales  come  alive  again.  Therefore  he 
quaked  in  his  heart  when  he  heard  the  rumors 
that  ran  about  the  camp. 

The  war  began  about  Cottonwood,  and  ran 
like  wildfire  that  licked  up  all  the  ranches  in 
its  course.  Then  the  whites  came  strongly 
against  the  Paiutes  at  the  Stone  Corral,  and 
made  an  end  of  the  best  of  their  fighting  men. 
Then  the  Indians  broke  out  in  the  north, 
and  at  last  it  came  to  such  a  pass  that  the 
very  boys  must  do  fighting,  and  the  women 
make  bowstrings.  The  cattlemen  turned  in  to 
Baker's  ranch  as  a  centre,  and  all  the  north- 
ern campoodies  gathered  together  to  attack 
them.  They  had  not  much  to  hope  for,  only 
to  do  as  much  killing  as  possible  before  the 
winter  set  in  with  the  hunger  and  the  deep 
snows. 

By  this  time  Joe's  father  was  dead,  and  his 
mother  had  brought  the  boy  a  quiver  full  of 
arrows  and  a  new  bowstring,  and  sent  him 
down  to  the  battle. 


MAHALA  JOE  215 

And  Joe  went  hotly  enough  to  join  the  men 
of  the  other  village,  nursing  his  bow  with 
great  care,  remembering  his  father,  but  when 
he  came  to  counsel  and  found  where  the  fight 
must  be,  his  heart  turned  again,  for  he  re- 
membered his  friend.  The  braves  camped  by 
Little  Round  Valley,  and  he  thought  of  the 
talk  he  and  Walter  had  there ;  the  war  party 
went  over  the  tongue  of  hills,  and  Joe  saw 
Winnedumah  shining  whitely  on  Waban,  and 
remembered  his  boyish  errand,  the  mystery  of 
the  tall,  strange  warrior  that  came  upon  them 
in  the  night,  their  talk  in  the  hut  of  the  arrow- 
maker,  and  the  vow  that  came  afterward. 

The  Indians  came  down  a  ravine  toward 
Tres  Pinos,  and  there  met  a  band  of  horses 
which  some  of  their  party  had  run  in  from  the 
ranches ;  among  them  was  a  pinto  pony  which 
Walter  had  used  to  ride,  and  it  came  to  Joe's 
hand  when  he  called.  Then  the  boy  wondered 
if  Walter  might  be  dead,  and  leaned  his  head 
against  the  pony's  mane ;  it  turned  its  head 
and  nickered  softly  at  his  ear. 

The  war  party  stayed  in  the  ravine  until  it 


216  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

grew  dark,  and  Joe  watched  how  Winnedu- 
mah  swam  in  a  mist  above  the  hills  long  after 
the  sun  had  gone  quite  down,  as  if  in  his 
faithfulness  he  would  outwatch  the  dark ;  and 
then  the  boy's  heart  was  lifted  up  to  the  great 
chief  standing  still  by  Tinnemaha.  "I  will 
not  forget,"  he  said.  "I,  too,  will  be  faith- 
ful." Perhaps  at  this  moment  he  expected  a 
miracle  to  help  him  in  his  vow  as  it  had 
helped  Winnedumah. 

In  the  dusk  the  mounted  Indians  rode  down 
by  the  Creek  of  Tres  Pinos.  When  they  came 
by  the  ruined  hut  where  his  father  had  lived, 
Joe's  heart  grew  hot  again,  and  when  he 
passed  the  arrow-maker's,  he  remembered  his 
vow.  Suddenly  he  wheeled  his  pony  in  the 
trail,  hardly  knowing  what  he  would  do.  The 
man  next  to  him  laid  an  arrow  across  his  bow 
and  pointed  it  at  the  boy's  breast. 

"  Coward,"  he  whispered,  but  an  older  In- 
dian laid  his  hand  on  the  man's  arm. 

"Save  your  arrows,"  he  said.  Then  the 
ponies  swept  forward  in  the  charge,  but  Joe 
knew  in  an  instant  how  it  would  be  with  him. 


MAHALA  JOE  217 

He  would  be  called  false  and  a  coward,  killed 
for  it,  driven  from  the  tribe,  but  he  would  not 
fight  against  his  sworn  brother.  He  would 
keep  his  vow. 

A  sudden  rain  of  arrows  flew  from  the 
advancing  Paiutes;  Joe  fumbled  his  and 
dropped  it  on  the  ground.  He  was  wonder- 
ing if  one  of  the  many  aimed  would  find  his 
brother.  Bullets  answered  the  arrow  flight. 
He  saw  the  braves  pitch  forward,  and  heard 
the  scream  of  wounded  ponies. 

He  hoped  he  would  be  shot ;  he  would  not 
have  minded  that;  it  would  be  better  than 
being  called  a  coward.  And  then  it  occurred 
to  him,  if  Walter  and  his  father  came  out  and 
found  him  when  the  fight  was  done,  they 
would  think  that  he  had  broken  his  word.  The 
Paiutes  began  to  seek  cover,  but  Joe  drove 
out  wildly  from  them,  and  rode  back  in  the 
friendly  dark,  and  past  the  ruined  campoodie, 
to  the  black  rocks.  There  he  crept  into  the 
cave  which  only  he  and  Walter  knew,  and  lay 
on  his  face  and  cried,  for  though  he  was  an 
Indian  he  was  only  a  boy,  and  he  had  seen 


218  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

his  first  fight.  He  was  sick  with  the  thought 
of  his  vow.  He  lay  in  the  black  rocks  all  the 
night  and  the  day,  and  watched  the  cattlemen 
and  the  soldiers  ranging  all  that  county  for 
the  stragglers  of  his  people,  and  guessed  that 
the  Paiutes  had  made  the  last  stand.  Then 
in  the  second  night  he  began  to  work  back  by 
secret  paths  to  the  mountain  camp.  It  never 
occurred  to  him  not  to  go.  He  had  the  cour- 
age to  meet  what  waited  for  him  there,  but  he 
had  not  the  heart  to  go  to  it  in  the  full  light 
of  day.  He  came  in  by  his  mother's  place, 
and  she  spat  upon  him,  for  she  had  heard 
how  he  had  carried  himself  in  the  fight. 

"  No  son  of  mine,"  said  she. 

He  went  by  the  women  and  children  and 
heard  their  jeers.  His  heart  was  very  sick. 
He  went  apart  and  sat  down  and  waited  what 
the  men  would  say.  There  were  few  of  them 
left  about  the  dying  fire.  They  had  washed 
off  their  war  paint,  and  their  bows  were 
broken.  When  they  spoke  at  last,  it  was  with 
mocking  and  sad  scorn. 

"  We  have  enough  of  killing,"  said  the  one 


MAHALA  JOE  219 

called  Scar-Face.  "Let  him  have  a  woman's 
dress  and  stay  to  mend  the  fire." 

So  it  was  done  in  the  presence  of  all  the 
camp ;  and  because  he  was  a  boy,  and  be- 
cause he  was  an  Indian,  he  said  nothing  of 
his  vow,  nor  opened  his  mouth  in  his  defense, 
though  his  heart  quaked  and  his  knees  shook. 
He  had  the  courage  to  wear  the  badge  of 
being  afraid  all  his  lif e.  They  brought  him 
a  woman's  dress,  though  they  were  all  too 
sad  for  much  laughter,  and  in  the  morning 
he  set  to  bringing  the  wood  for  the  fire. 

Afterward  there  was  a  treaty  made  between 
the  Paiutes  and  the  settlers,  and  the  remnant 
went  back  to  the  campoodie  of  Tres  Pinos, 
and  Joe  learned  how  Walter  had  been  sent 
out  of  the  valley  in  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
but  that  did  not  make  any  difference  about 
the  woman's  dress.  He  and  Walter  never  met 
again.  He  continued  to  go  about  in  dresses, 
though  in  time  he  was  allowed  to  do  a  man's 
work,  and  his  knowledge  of  English  helped  to 
restore  a  friendly  footing  with  the  cattlemen. 
The  valley  filled  very  rapidly  with  settlers 


220  THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

after  that,  and  under  the  slack  usage  of  the 
tribe,  Mahala  Joe,  as  he  came  to  be  known, 
might  have  thrown  aside  his  woman's  gear 
without  offense,  but  he  had  the  courage  to 
wear  it  to  his  life's  end.  He  kept  his  sentence 
as  he  kept  his  vow,  and  yet  it  is  certain  that 
Walter  never  knew. 


(Oe  tfitrrsi&e 

Electrotyped and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &•"  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mast.,  U.S.A. 


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